Full military honors

Oil prices on Friday hit $66 a barrel, setting a fresh six-month high and heading for their biggest monthly gain in more than 10 years, following Opec’s upbeat comments about oil demand in Asia at its meeting this week. Abdalla El-Badri, Opec’s secretary general, said prices could rise to $70-$75 a barrel by the end of the year. “The outlook is improving,” Mr El-Badri said over breakfast. But added: “The fundamentals are still weak.”

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me@rescam.org

Obama's silent ally: the press

Robert J. Samuelson
NEWSWEEK

June 2, 2009

The Obama infatuation is a great unreported story of our time. Has any recent president basked in so much favorable media coverage? Well, maybe John Kennedy for a moment; but no president since. On the whole, this is not healthy for America.

Our political system works best when a president faces checks on his power. But the main checks on Obama are modest. They come from congressional Democrats, who largely share his goals if not always his means. The leaderless and confused Republicans don't provide effective opposition. And the press — on domestic, if not foreign, policy — has so far largely abdicated its role as skeptical observer.

Obama has inspired a collective fawning. What started in the campaign (the chief victim was Hillary Clinton, not John McCain) has continued, as a study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism shows. It concludes: “President Barack Obama has enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush during their first months in the White House.”

The study examined 1,261 stores by The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC, CBS and NBC, Newsweek magazine and the “NewsHour” on PBS. Favorable stories (42 percent) were double the unfavorable (20 percent), while the rest were “neutral” or “mixed.” Obama's treatment contrasts sharply with coverage in the first two months of the presidencies of Bush (22 percent of stories favorable) and Clinton (27 percent).

Unlike Bush and Clinton, Obama received favorable coverage in both news columns and opinion pages. The nature of stories also changed. “Roughly twice as much of the coverage of Obama (44 percent) has concerned his personal and leadership qualities than was the case for Bush (22 percent) or Clinton (26 percent),” the report said. “Less of the coverage, meanwhile, has focused on his policy agenda.”

When Pew broadened the analysis to 49 outlets — cable channels, news Web sites, morning news shows, more newspapers and National Public Radio — the results were similar, despite some outliers. No surprise: MSNBC was favorable, Fox was not. Another study, released by the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, reached parallel conclusions.

The infatuation matters because Obama's ambitions are so grand. He wants to expand health care subsidies, tightly control energy use and overhaul immigration. He envisions the greatest growth of government since Lyndon Johnson. The Congressional Budget Office estimates federal spending in 2019 at nearly 25 percent of the economy (gross domestic product). That's well up from the 21 percent in 2008, and far above the post-World War II average; it would also occur before many baby boomers retire.

Are his proposals practical, even if desirable? Maybe they're neither? What might be unintended consequences? All “reforms” do not succeed; some cause more problems than they solve. Johnson's economic policies, inherited from Kennedy, proved disastrous; they led to the 1970s' “stagflation.” The “war on poverty” failed. The press should not be hostile; but it ought to be skeptical.

Mostly, it isn't. The idea of a “critical” Obama story is a tactical conflict with congressional Democrats or criticism from an important constituency. Larger issues are minimized, despite ample grounds for skepticism.

The cause of this acquiescence isn't clear. The press sometimes follows opinion polls; popular presidents get good coverage, and Obama is enormously popular. By Pew, his job performance rating is 63 percent. But because favorable coverage began in the campaign, this explanation is at best partial.

Perhaps the preoccupation with the present economic crisis has diverted attention from the long-term implications of other policies. But the deeper explanation may be as straightforward as this: most journalists like Obama; they admire his command of language; he's a relief after Bush; they agree with his agenda (so it never occurs to them to question basic premises); and they don't want to see the first African-American president fail.

Whatever, a great edifice of government may arise on the narrow foundation of Obama's personal popularity. Another Pew survey shows that since the election both self-identified Republicans and Democrats have declined. “Independents” have increased, and “there has been no consistent movement away from conservatism, nor a shift toward liberalism.”

The press has become Obama's silent ally and seems in a state of denial. But the story goes untold: Unsurprisingly, the study of all the favorable coverage received little coverage.

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me@rescam.org

Newspulper Headlines:

Hey, Nice Shot!: "N. Korea Defiantly Fires 6th Missile, Slams U.N." --FoxNews.com

There Wouldn't Be Much Point in Launching Used Ones: "US Officials: North Korea May Launch New Missiles" --Associated Press

We Blame Global Warming: "Why Is the Earth Moving Away From the Sun?" --NewScientist.com

What Kind of Sap Would Hope for That?: "Mortgage Rates Surge, Sap Hopes" --The Wall Street Journal

Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control: "Peasants' Revolts Threaten Political Class" --Financial Times

News You Can Use: "How to Survive in a World Ruled by Robots" --MSNBC.com

Bottom Stories of the Day: "Chicago Alderman Is Indicted" --The Wall Street Journal

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto)

Newspulper Headlines:

Hey, Nice Shot!: "N. Korea Defiantly Fires 6th Missile, Slams U.N." --FoxNews.com

There Wouldn't Be Much Point in Launching Used Ones: "US Officials: North Korea May Launch New Missiles" --Associated Press

We Blame Global Warming: "Why Is the Earth Moving Away From the Sun?" --NewScientist.com

What Kind of Sap Would Hope for That?: "Mortgage Rates Surge, Sap Hopes" --The Wall Street Journal

Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control: "Peasants' Revolts Threaten Political Class" --Financial Times

News You Can Use: "How to Survive in a World Ruled by Robots" --MSNBC.com

Bottom Stories of the Day: "Chicago Alderman Is Indicted" --The Wall Street Journal

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto)

My take on it would be -
#1 Heads up U.N. NK is still at war with you - they only agreed to a cease-fire.
#2 They are recycling - that's why they threaten other nations about retrieving the used ones.
#3 You'd move away too if someone had spots on their face.
#4 Pelosi made the news AGAIN.
#5 Non-news, America does it every 4 years.
#6 Never Happen - Pols need MONEY, that's why they spend all their time trying to get mine.
#7 So? When are they going after Mr. Big?

thanks SK :)

---

Classic WU= 7,237 Classic Hours= 42,079

The heroes of the Beijing massacre

By Nicholas D. Kristof
San Diego Union Tribune

June 5, 2009

It was 20 years ago that I stood on the northwest corner of Tiananmen Square and watched “People's China” open fire on the people.

It was night; the gunfire roared in our ears; and the Avenue of Eternal Peace was streaked with blood. Uniformed army troops massed on the far end of the square, periodically raising their assault rifles and firing volleys directly at the crowd I was in, and we would all rush backward in terror until the firing stopped.

Then the volley would end, and in the deafening silence we would stop and look back. In the hundred yards between us and the soldiers would be kids who had been shot, lying dead or wounded on the ground.

Some protesters shouted insults at the troops or threw bricks or Molotov cocktails that landed ineffectually in the open area. But none of us dared to go forward to help the injured as they writhed. I was the Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times, and I was cowering behind a layer of other people whom I hoped would absorb bullets; the notebook in my hand was stained with perspiration from fear.

Troops had already opened fire on an ambulance that had tried to collect the injured, so other ambulances kept their distance. Finally, some unlikely saviors emerged – the rickshaw drivers.

These were peasants and workers who made a living pedaling bicycle rickshaws, carrying passengers or freight around Beijing. It was those rickshaw drivers who slowly pedaled out toward the troops to collect the bodies of the dead and injured. Then they raced back to us, legs straining furiously, rushing toward the nearest hospital.

One stocky rickshaw driver had tears streaming down his cheeks as he drove past me to display a badly wounded student so that I could photograph or recount the incident. That driver perhaps couldn't have defined democracy, but he had risked his life to try to advance it.

That was happening all over Beijing. On the old airport road that same night, truckloads of troops were entering the city from the east. A middle-aged bus driver saw them and quickly blocked the road with his bus.

Move aside, the troops shouted.

I won't let you attack the students, the bus driver retorted defiantly.

The troops pointed their guns at the bus driver and ordered him to move the bus aside. Instead, he plucked the keys from the ignition and hurled them into the bushes beside the road to ensure that no one could drive that bus away. The man was arrested; I don't know what happened to him.

So, 20 years later, what happened to that bold yearning for democracy? Why is China still frozen politically – the regime controls the press more tightly today than it did for much of the 1980s – even as China has transformed economically? Why are there so few protests today?

One answer is that most energy has been diverted to making money, partly because it's a safer outlet. One of my Chinese friends explains that if he were to protest loudly, he might be arrested; if he were to protest quietly, it would be a waste of time. “I may as well just spend the time watching a pirated DVD,” he said.

Another answer is that many of those rickshaw drivers and bus drivers and others in 1989 were demanding not precisely a parliamentary democracy, but a better life – and they got it. The Communist Party has done an extraordinarily good job of managing China's economy and of elevating economically the same people it oppresses politically.

Living standards have soared, and people in Beijing may not have the vote, but they do have an infant mortality rate that is 27 percent lower than New York City's.

Not all is sweet: The environment is a catastrophe, an ugly nationalism is surging among some young Chinese and even nonpolitical Chinese chafe at corruption and at Web censorship (including the blocking this week of Twitter, Flickr and Hotmail). Balancing that, their children now get an education incomparably better than in earlier generations – better overall than many children get in the United States.

When you educate citizens and create a middle class, you nurture aspirations for political participation. In that sense, China is following the same path as Taiwan and South Korea in the 1980s.

In Taiwan in 1986, an ambitious young official named Ma Ying-jeou used to tell me that robust Western-style democracy might not be fully suited for the people of Taiwan. He revised his view and now is the island's democratically elected president.

Some of my friends are Communist Party officials, and they are biding their time. We outsiders also may as well be similarly pragmatic and patient, for there's not much we can do to accelerate this process. And as we wait, we can be inspired by those rickshaw drivers of 20 years ago.

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me@rescam.org

Inflation, deflation or both?

Robert J. Samuelson
NEWSWEEK

June 8, 2009

To make sense of today's most perplexing economic debate – whether we're flirting with inflation or deflation – it's worth recalling what happened after World War II. Under intense political pressure, President Truman lifted wage-price controls. All heck broke loose. Suppressed during the war, wages and prices exploded. Autoworkers, steelworkers and others went on strike for higher pay. In 1946 and 1947, consumer prices rose 8.5 percent and 14.4 percent, respectively.

What's instructive is that prices then stabilized. There was no upward wage-price spiral as occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. True, a mild recession in late 1948 and 1949 helped temper price increases. But inflation subsided mainly because people didn't expect it to continue. They'd lived through the Depression, when prices declined. They knew that, except for the impact of wars, prices were usually fairly stable.

The lesson for today: psychology matters. What economists call “expectations” shape how workers, managers and investors behave. If they fear inflation, they act in ways that bring it about. The converse is also true, as the late 1940s remind. The lesson provides context for today's debate. Are the Federal Reserve's easy-money policies laying the groundwork for higher inflation? Or will these policies prevent deflation – a broad decline of prices – that would deepen the economic slump?

The questions arise from the Fed's strenuous efforts to contain the economic crisis. It has cut the overnight Fed funds rate almost to zero. It has made loans when private lenders wouldn't – in the commercial paper market, for instance. To lower long-term interest rates, it has pledged to buy $1.25 trillion of mortgage securities backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and $300 billion of long-term Treasury bonds. All these measures are without modern precedent.

Precisely, say the inflation worriers. Once the economy recovers, the easy money and credit will spawn inflation. Cheap loans will bid up prices; wages may follow. Low interest rates will encourage spending and deter saving. The Fed will be “under pressure from Congress, the administration and business . . . to prevent interest rates from increasing,” warns economist Allan Meltzer of Carnegie Mellon University. With huge budget deficits, the White House and Congress will want to hold down borrowing costs. Inflation psychology will emerge.

Nonsense, say deflation worriers. Inflation results mainly from too much demand chasing too little supply. Today, too much supply chases too little demand. High unemployment and slack business capacity (idle factories, vacant office suites, closed mines) impede wage and price increases. If the Fed doesn't maintain cheap credit, shrinking demand might cause prices and wages to spiral down.

It seems impossible for both arguments to be correct; but they may be. In the past year, the Consumer Price Index has been roughly stable. In May, unemployment rose to 9.4 percent from 8.9 percent. A survey by Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that 52 percent of firms had frozen or cut salaries. GM's bankruptcy is but one indicator of excess industrial capacity. The surplus is worldwide, finds a study by Joseph Lupton and David Hensley of J.P. Morgan. Inflationary expectations are low.

All this gives the Fed maneuvering room. Expectations matter; inflation won't burst forth instantly. Even Meltzer doesn't see an immediate surge. “When will it come? Surely not right away,” he writes.

Still, Meltzer's warning remains relevant. The Fed has often overdone expansionary policies and fostered inflationary expectations. In the 1960s and 1970s, that occurred through excess demand and a classic wage-price spiral. The danger now might emerge through exchange rates and commodity prices. Inflation fears could raise prices of commodities (oil, metals, foodstuffs) and depress the dollar. Imports would become costlier, allowing domestic producers to raise prices. There's evidence (better housing and auto sales, stronger growth in “emerging markets”) that the danger of a deflationary economic free fall is ebbing. Someday, the Fed will have to raise interest rates. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has pledged to pre-empt high inflation. Will the Fed get the timing right and resist contrary political pressures? Will the pledges reassure markets?

One reason they might not is that Bernanke's term as chairman expires in January. Any replacement named by President Obama would be seen, fairly or not, as more beholden to the administration. The president could eliminate that perception by offering Bernanke – who has performed well in the crisis – a second four-year term and, if he accepts, announcing the reappointment. That would not settle today's deflation-inflation debate. Only time will do that, but it would remove a needless uncertainty.

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me@rescam.org

Inflation? Deflation? Both!
I have a part time job as a caregiver. The state came along and cut my hours by 1.5 hours a day! (deflated income).
In the same stroke the legislators voted themselves a pay raise! (inflated taxation).
Having ALREADY cut my hours - they are now working to cut my pay rate which hasn't yet even reached double digits per hour.
The same folks are working now to raise the state sales tax AND the state income tax.
My property taxes increased again while my property value decreased (except at the county assessors office)
Food prices seem to still be going up - gasoline prices are going up again as are my utility costs. While automobile costs seem to be going down - I still can't afford to replace my junker.
For keeping a few Kbucks in a savings account - I get 6 cents a month interest income. (taxable). My credit card with the same bank raised my rate to 14.9% from 9%. Fortunately I have no outstanding card balances. Even if I did - unlike the interest I GET - the Interest I PAY is not DEDUCTABLE.
It seems like every time you get a deflated price for something - some politician or finance officer is waiting on the sidelines to take it away

---

Classic WU= 7,237 Classic Hours= 42,079

Inflation? Deflation? Both!
I have a part time job as a caregiver. The state came along and cut my hours by 1.5 hours a day! (deflated income).
In the same stroke the legislators voted themselves a pay raise! (inflated taxation).
Having ALREADY cut my hours - they are now working to cut my pay rate which hasn't yet even reached double digits per hour.
The same folks are working now to raise the state sales tax AND the state income tax.
My property taxes increased again while my property value decreased (except at the county assessors office)
Food prices seem to still be going up - gasoline prices are going up again as are my utility costs. While automobile costs seem to be going down - I still can't afford to replace my junker.
For keeping a few Kbucks in a savings account - I get 6 cents a month interest income. (taxable). My credit card with the same bank raised my rate to 14.9% from 9%. Fortunately I have no outstanding card balances. Even if I did - unlike the interest I GET - the Interest I PAY is not DEDUCTABLE.
It seems like every time you get a deflated price for something - some politician or finance officer is waiting on the sidelines to take it away

I lived in Wisconsin a decade ago and while there the state went and "reset" property values while at the same time reducing the tax rate. Not surprising the values by enlarge went up. the next year they returned the rates to their previous level. so in 2 different years they could claim at first they had lowered the tax rates and the second could claim the values had not increased.
Now I live and Texas and they are in the process of doing the same thing. You gotta love a good stab in the back

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

Newspulper Headlines:

Breaking News From 1988, 1992, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2008...: "Democratic Candidates Adopt Anti-Bush Strategy" --USA Today

We Blame George W. Bush: "Russian Military Historian Blames Poland for WWII" --Associated Press

We Blame These Despicable Republican Attacks That Always Seem to Come From Those Who Never Can Be Found to Serve in War, but Love to Attack Those Who Did: "Kerry Blames $820K IRS Tax Lien on Clerical Error" --OnWallStreet.com

We're From the Government, and We're Here to Help: "IRS to Help Taxpayers During Downturn" --Congress Daily

Earth's Bloodiest Bookstore: "Amazon Clashes Claim 30 Lives" --Financial Times

Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control: "Media Skeptical of Obama Stimulus Claims" --U.S. News & World Report Web site

News You Can Use: "Minnesota Zoo Wants You to Sort Out Poop" --Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

Bottom Stories of the Day: "Michelle Obama Visits Eiffel Tower With Sasha and Malia, Wears Stylish Scarf" --Huffington Post

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto)

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Iranians want change, by their own doing

David Ignatius
THE WASHINGTON POST

June 16, 2009

The stormy Iranian elections are one more sign of how the world has been shaken up in the age of Barack Obama. The ruling mullahs are nervous about a threat to the regime; the opposition is in the streets protesting what they claim is a rigged election. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is claiming a new mandate, but what the world sees is the regime's vulnerability.

And what should Obama say about this ferment in Iran, a process that he has subtly encouraged? I'd argue that he should continue with the line he took in his Cairo speech two weeks ago — speaking directly to Muslim publics even as he proposes dialogue with the repressive regimes that govern Iran and many other nations.

Obama would make a mistake if he seemed to meddle in Iranian politics. That would give the mullahs the foreign enemy they need to discredit the reformers. Obama's message should be: “We support the Iranian people and their democracy. Any change in how Iran is governed is their decision, not America's.” The decisive pressure will come not from Washington, but from the international spotlight focused on the extraordinary drama.

The wild card is whether the young protesters will stay in the streets, forcing the mullahs to take strong, and potentially destabilizing, action against them. One knowledgeable former CIA officer says that Iranian protests appear to be “loosely organized,” with no outside help. Another former CIA officer who specialized in Iran says the regime's fears of a “color revolution,” as in Georgia or Ukraine, are premature. But he warns: “It could get interesting as the summer wears on.”

U.S. intelligence officials tell me that it's quite possible Ahmadinejad actually did win Friday's election — though with a lower total than the 63 percent that the regime is claiming. “It would appear that the results are inflated,” said one official, reflecting what he said was the preliminary judgment of the intelligence community. But he cautioned: “Our ability to peer into the Iranian election machinery is very limited.”

Obama's opening to Iran seems to have encouraged the supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the former prime minister who finished second in the official results — and whose supporters have been rioting the past few days. “A growing portion of the Iranian public sees an opening with the U.S. as positive, and Obama has encouraged that,” the intelligence official explained.

The well-spoken Mousavi and his charismatic wife were a tonic for Iranians who have been embarrassed by Ahmadinejad's crude tirades. “They are tired of being laughed at and spurned,” said the intelligence official, who closely monitors information from Iran and other Muslim countries.

U.S. intelligence officials consulted with the White House as speechwriters were preparing the Cairo address — seeking to calibrate the message in a way that would be most effective in countering Muslim extremists. These officials believe that Obama, with his coolly rational approach, is suggesting a new pathway for young people who might otherwise be tempted by jihadist rhetoric.

“What the president has done thus far is create a strategic framework for understanding the U.S. in a different way,” said a second intelligence official. Obama is “chipping away” at the radical narrative and “increasing the number of alternatives to that radical view,” he explained. “He's making more attractive the idea that change can occur outside the radicalization process.”

A similar analysis of Obama's outreach to the Muslim world comes from Tawfik Hamid, a former jihadist from Egypt who was once part of a network that included Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No. 2 official in al-Qaeda. Hamid argued in an interview that Obama has encouraged “critical thinking” among young Muslims — pushing them to transcend the simple categories of halal (pure and Islamic) and haram (impure and un-Islamic.) Hamid recalled that among his jihadist group in Cairo, there was a saying: al fikr kufr, which loosely translates as: “To think makes you an infidel.” Obama challenges that.

Reason versus unreason; outreach versus closed minds; connection with the modern world versus isolation and backwardness; freedom versus repression. This is the shape of the debate in Iran and much of the rest of the Muslim world as the age of Obama moves forward. For once, it's an argument that puts America firmly (but unobtrusively) on the side of the people. What we're seeing in Tehran is a reminder that millions of Muslims hunger for change — but they want to make it themselves.

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me@rescam.org

Newspulper Headlines:

Now the Feds Are Picking the Furniture: "Next Chair Is Chosen for GM" --Detroit Free Press

Even 2,000-Plus Years Later: "B.C. Forest Fire Means Beautiful Sunsets in Seattle" --Seattle Times

Imagine the Sunsets That'll Produce: "Earth-Venus Smash-Up Possible in 3.5 Billion Years: Study" --Agence France-Presse

It's Always in the Last Place You Look: "Obama Administration Finds Health-Care Model in Green Bay" --Washington Post

Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control: "What if Obama's Out of His Mind?" --Esquire.com

News You Can Use: "The Recession Is Great" --Forbes.com

Bottom Stories of the Day: "China Not Sending 3 Rare Golden Monkeys to LA Zoo" --Associated Press

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto)

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Pretend you are Obama

By David Brooks
THE NEW YORK TIMES

June 18, 2009

Let's say that you are President Barack Obama. You've inherited a health care system that is the insane spawn of a team of evil geniuses from an alien power. Pay is divorced from performance. Users are separated from costs. Rising costs threaten to destroy your nation and everything you hold dear.

Because you have a lofty perspective on things, you know there are basically two ways to fix this mess. There is the liberal way, in which the government takes over the health care system and decides who gets what. And then there is the conservative way, in which cost-conscious consumers make choices in the context of a competitive marketplace.

You also know that these two approaches have one thing in common. They are both currently politically unsellable. Others have tried and perished. There are vast (opposing) armies arrayed against them. The whole issue is a nightmare.

You are daunted by the challenges in front of you until you remember that by some great act of fortune, you happen to be Barack Obama. This calms you down. You conceive a strategy.

The first step in this strategy is table-setting. You will spend the first several months of your administration talking grandly about the need for reform. You will invite all interested parties to the table, and you will serve a great heaping plate of pablum. You will talk about things that no sentient person could possibly disagree with – about the need for better information technology and for more preventive care.

There will be less health care nitty-gritty here than in your average pre-K circle time, but you are getting everybody talking. You are building relationships.

In stage two, you pass everything over to Congress. You'll need these windbags at the end, so you might as well get them busy at the beginning. This will produce a whirl of White Papers, a flurry of committee activity, a set of legislative rivalries as every chairman in the stable seeks to be the lead horse in the romp to legislative glory. All you have to do is raise a portentous eyebrow from time to time, signaling grand approval of the various proposals as they blow by.

This brings us to the current stage: The Long Tease. Every player in this game has a favorite idea, and you are open to all of them. The liberals want a public plan, and you're for it. The budget guys are for slashing Medicare reimbursements and you're for that. The doctors want relief from lawsuits, and you're open to it. The Republicans want you to cap the tax exemption on employee health benefits. You campaigned against that, but you're still privately for it.

You ran on a platform of hope and, boy, are you delivering. Every special interest in Washington lives in hope that they will get their pet idea incorporated into the final bill.

None will come out and oppose you, because they live in hope. Even the different factions in your own administration live in hope. One of your health advisers pretended to smile at one of your economists!

This brings you to the final stage, the scrum. This is the set of all-night meetings at the end of the congressional summer session when all the different pieces actually get put together.

You want the scrum to be quick, so that the bill is passed before some of the interests groups realize that they've been decapitated. You want the scrum to be frantic, so you can tell your allies that their reservations might destroy the whole effort (this is how you are going to get the liberals to water down the public plan and the moderates to loosen their fiscal rectitude).

The scrum will be an ugly, all-out scramble for dough. You can probably get expanded coverage out of it. You can hammer the hospitals and get much of the $1.2 trillion to pay for the expansion. But you won't be able to honestly address the toughest issues and still hold your coalition. You won't get the kind of structural change that will bring down costs long-term. In the scrum, Congress will embrace the easy stuff and bury the hard stuff.

Which is why you have MedPAC. That's the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission that you want to turn into a health care Federal Reserve Board – an aloof technocratic body of experts that will make tough decisions beyond the reach of politics. You can take every thorny issue, throw it to MedPac and consider it solved.

Conservatives will claim you're giving enormous power to an unelected bunch of wonks. They'll say that health care is too complicated to be run by experts from Washington. But you'll say that you are rising above politics. You'll have your (partial) health care victory. Not bad for a skinny guy with big ears.

---

me@rescam.org

U.S. missing chance for revolution

Charles Krauthammer
THE WASHINGTON POST

June 19, 2009

Millions of Iranians take to the streets to defy a theocratic dictatorship that, among its other finer qualities, is a self-declared enemy of America and the tolerance and liberties it represents. The demonstrators are fighting on their own, but they await just a word that America is on their side.

And what do they hear from the president of the United States? Silence. Then, worse. Three days in, the president makes clear his policy: continued “dialogue” with their clerical masters.

Dialogue with a regime that is breaking heads, shooting demonstrators, expelling journalists, arresting activists. Engagement with — which inevitably confers legitimacy upon — leaders elected in a process that begins as a sham (only four handpicked candidates permitted out of 476) and ends in overt rigging.

Then, after treating this popular revolution as an inconvenience to the real business of Obama-Khamanei negotiations, the president speaks favorably of “some initial reaction from the Supreme Leader that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election.”

Where to begin? “Supreme Leader”? Note the abject solicitousness with which the American president confers this honorific on a clerical dictator who, even as his minions attack demonstrators, offers to examine some returns in some electoral districts — a farcical fix that will do nothing to alter the fraudulence of the election.

Moreover, this incipient revolution is no longer about the election. Obama totally misses the point. The election allowed the political space and provided the spark for the eruption of anti-regime fervor that has been simmering for years and awaiting its moment. But people aren't dying in the street because they want a recount of hanging chads in suburban Isfahan. They want to bring down the tyrannical, misogynist, corrupt theocracy that has imposed itself with the very baton-wielding goons that today attack the demonstrators.

This started out about election fraud. But like all revolutions, it has far outgrown its origins. What's at stake now is the very legitimacy of this regime — and the future of the entire Middle East.

This revolution will end either as a Tiananmen (a hot Tiananmen with massive and bloody repression or a cold Tiananmen with a finer mix of brutality and co-optation) or as a true revolution that brings down the Islamic Republic.

The latter is improbable but, for the first time in 30 years, not impossible. Imagine the repercussions. It would mark a decisive blow to Islamist radicalism, of which Iran today is not just standard-bearer and model, but financier and arms supplier. It would do to Islamism what the collapse of the Soviet Union did to communism — leave it forever spent and discredited.

In the region, it would launch a second Arab spring. The first in 2005 — the expulsion of Syria from Lebanon, first elections in Iraq and early liberalization in the Gulf states and Egypt — was aborted by a fierce counterattack from the forces of repression and reaction, led and funded by Iran.

Now, with Hezbollah having lost elections in Lebanon and with Iraq establishing the institutions of a young democracy, the fall of the Islamist dictatorship in Iran would have an electric and contagious effect. The exception — Iraq and Lebanon — becomes the rule. Democracy becomes the wave. Syria becomes isolated; Hezbollah and Hamas, patronless. The entire trajectory of the region is reversed.

All hangs in the balance. The Khamenei regime is deciding whether to do a Tiananmen. And what side is the Obama administration taking? None. Except for the desire that this “vigorous debate” (press secretary Robert Gibbs' disgraceful euphemism) over election “irregularities” not stand in the way of U.S.-Iranian engagement on nuclear weapons.

Even from the narrow perspective of the nuclear issue, the administration's geopolitical calculus is absurd. There is zero chance that any such talks will denuclearize Iran. On Monday, Ahmadinejad declared yet again that the nuclear “file is shut, forever.” The only hope for a resolution of the nuclear question is regime change, which (if the successor regime were as moderate as pre-Khomeini Iran) might either stop the program, or make it manageable and nonthreatening.

That's our fundamental interest. And our fundamental values demand that America stand with demonstrators opposing a regime that is the antithesis of all we believe.

And where is our president? Afraid of “meddling.” Afraid to take sides between the head-breaking, women-shackling exporters of terror — and the people in the street yearning to breathe free. This from a president who fancies himself the restorer of America's moral standing in the world.

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me@rescam.org

Fragile at the Core
By DAVID BROOKS
NY Times

Most of the time, foreign relations are kind of boring — negotiations, communiqués, soporific speeches. But then there are moments of radical discontinuity—1789, 1917, 1989—when the very logic of history flips.

At these moments — like the one in Iran right now — change is not generated incrementally from the top. Instead, power is radically dispersed. The real action is out on the streets. The future course of events is maximally uncertain.

The fate of nations is determined by glances and chance encounters: by the looks policemen give one another as a protesting crowd approaches down a boulevard; by the presence of a spontaneous leader who sets off a chant or a song and with it an emotional contagion; by a captain who either decides to kill his countrymen or not; by a shy woman who emerges from a throng to throw herself on the thugs who are pummeling a kid prone on the sidewalk.

The most important changes happen invisibly inside peoples’ heads. A nation that had seemed apathetic suddenly mobilizes. People lost in private life suddenly feel their public dignity has been grievously insulted. Webs of authority that had gone unquestioned instantly dissolve, or do not. New social customs spontaneously emerge, like the citizens of Tehran shouting hauntingly from their rooftops at night. Small gestures unify a crowd and symbolize a different future, like the moment when Mir Hussein Moussavi held hands with his wife in public.

At moments like these, policy makers and advisors in the United States government almost always retreat to passivity and caution. Part of this is pure prudence. When you don’t know what’s happening, it’s sensible to do as little as possible because anything you do might cause more harm than good.

Part of it is professional mind-set. Foreign policy experts are trained in the art of analysis, extrapolation and linear thinking. They simply have no tools to analyze moments that are non-linear, paradigm-shifting and involve radical shifts in consciousness. As a result, they almost invariably underestimate how rapid change might be and how quickly it might come. As Michael McFaul, a democracy expert who serves on the National Security Council, once wrote: “In retrospect, all revolutions seem inevitable. Beforehand, all revolutions seem impossible.”

Many of us have been dissatisfied with the legalistic calibrations of the Obama administration’s response to Iran, which have been disproportionate to the sweeping events there. We’ve been rooting for the politicians in the administration, like Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who have been working for a more sincere and heartfelt response.

But the comments of the first few days are not that important. What’s important is that the Obama administration understands the scope of what is happening. And on the big issue, my understanding is that the administration has it exactly right.

The core lesson of these events is that the Iranian regime is fragile at the core. Like all autocratic regimes, it has become rigid, paranoid, insular, insecure, impulsive, clumsy and illegitimate. The people running the regime know it, which is why the Revolutionary Guard is seeking to consolidate power into a small, rigid, insulated circle. The Iranians on the streets know it. The world knows it.

From now on, the central issue of Iran-Western relations won’t be the nuclear program. The regime is more fragile than the program. The regime is more likely to go away than the program.

The central issue going forward will be the regime’s survival itself. The radically insecure members of this government will make no concessions that might threaten their hold on power. The West won’t be able to go back and view Iran through the old lens of engagement on nuclear issues. The nations of the West will have to come up with multi-track policies that not only confront Iran on specific issues, but also try to undermine the regime itself.

This approach is like Ronald Reagan’s policy toward the Soviet Union, and it is no simple thing. It doesn’t mean you don’t talk to the regime; Reagan talked to the Soviets. But it does mean you pursue many roads at once.

There is no formula for undermining a decrepit regime. And there are no circumstances in which the United States has been able to peacefully play a leading role in another nation’s revolution. But there are many tools this nation has used to support indigenous democrats: independent media, technical advice, economic and cultural sanctions, presidential visits for key dissidents, the unapologetic embrace of democratic values, the unapologetic condemnation of the regime’s barbarities.

Recently, many people thought it was clever to say that elections on their own don’t make democracies. But election campaigns stoke the mind and fraudulent elections outrage the soul. The Iranian elections have stirred a whirlwind that will lead, someday, to the regime’s collapse. Hastening that day is now the central goal.

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Newspulper Headlines:

Although 'Misspelled' Is Right Up There: "'Definitely' Is Most Commonly Misspelt Word" --Daily Telegraph (London)

It's Always in the Last Place You Look: "Huge Roman-Era Cave Found by Jericho" --Jerusalem Post

Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control: "Man Sets Off Fireworks in Bathroom at Del. Arby's" --Associated Press

News You Can Use: "10 Ways to Swat a Fly" --BBC Web site

Bottom Stories of the Day: "Strong Words on Climate Change" --Boston Globe

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto)