Maureen Dowd wrote a column yesterday

In which, according to Alex Pareene, she made a joke about Al Gore and "earth tones."

I won't link to it, but I think this line says it best:

Maureen Dowd is a Pulitzer-winning columnist.

The Liz Cheney Experience

Steve Benen asks why "Liz Cheney is on my teevee."

Liz Cheney, who has no expertise in national security policy, continues to be given media platforms by outlets that prefer to pretend she knows what she's talking about.

He then answers his own question.

Take this morning, for example, when Cheney condemned the Obama administration on "Fox News Sunday."

She is on "Fox News Sunday" because "Fox News Sunday," like Hannity and a few other Fox News programs, is there to promote rising GOP brand names. The Cheney name is a major brand name and, as Mark Leibovitch pointed out in his profile of her last September, she's the rising, new and improved member of the Cheney product line.

When you think about it, the modern GOP is little more than a bunch of brand names without much in the way of substance behind the logo. Palin, Huckabee, Cheney, even the Tea baggers, are self-propelled marketing items. They don't bring ideas -- they have opinions but no real viewpoints -- they only bring their images and "personalities."

The numbers may not lie, but Howard Fineman, eh

Newsweek's resident sage, Howard Fineman, talks to a Democratic Congressman whom he can't name of course, who voted for the health care bill "because of party loyalty and admiration for President Obama," but now regrets his decision.

A Democratic senator I can't name, who reluctantly voted for the health-care bill out of loyalty to his party and his admiration for Barack Obama, privately complained to me that the measure was political folly, in part because of the way it goes into effect: some taxes first, most benefits later, and rate hikes by insurance companies in between.

Besides that, this Democrat said, people who already have coverage will feel threatened and resentful about helping to cover the uninsured—an emotion they will sanitize for the polltakers into a concern about federal spending and debt.

On the day the president signed into law the "fix-it" addendum to the massive health-care measure, two new polls show just how fearful and skeptical Americans are about the entire enterprise. If the numbers stay where they are—and it's not clear why they will change much between now and November—then the Democrats really are in danger of colossal losses at the polls.

Yeah, I don't know what "sanitize for the polltakers" means either. But anyway, first let's put that in to perspective. A man paid to punditize American national politics thinks that poll numbers taken in March will be fixed until November, and who also believes he can predict in which direction those numbers will take in the next eight months, well, that man should not be paid to do so.

But let's look at his basic contention, that the law is all pain now (in the form of taxes and higher premiums, all before November) for a little gain later. Um, I think debaters have a Latin term for that: Bullshitius Ignoramitus.

While the biggest changes will not take effect until 2014, some important provisions will begin as early as June, while others will kick in by the end of the year. These include significant new restrictions on the insurance industry and new protections for consumers who already have health insurance. There are also perks for Medicare recipients and help for young adults. And in just 90 days there will be new coverage for people who have lost health insurance and can’t qualify for an individual policy.

“The basic thrust of this law is that all of these nooks and crannies, all these gaps where private insurance has left you without any option, those are going to be taken away,” said DeAnn Friedholm, the campaign director of health reform for Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports. “It’s complicated, but it does establish a very key, important policy that you’re going to have options, regardless of your health situation or your employment situation.”

[...]

If you haven’t had insurance for six months, and you can’t afford or don’t qualify for insurance because of a pre-existing medical problem, you may be eligible for a new federal “high risk” pool to be offered by the end of June.

[...]

Beginning in September, the new law is expected to stop insurance companies from rejecting children or excluding coverage because of pre-existing medical problems. That’s what happened to Diane Knight, 52, of Orem, Utah, when she tried to get health insurance for her 17-year-old daughter.

Although Ms. Knight and her husband had family insurance in the past, they lost it when they left their jobs to start a small business. When they discovered that they were unable to get new insurance because both had a past cancer diagnosis, they sought an individual policy just for their daughter. But she was rejected, too, because she had used expensive prescription acne cream when she was younger and the insurance company did not want to pay for that in the future.

[...]

This year Medicare recipients with high drug costs will get a rebate of up to $250. And in 2011, the plan will pick up a larger share of brand-name drug costs. In addition, Medicare recipients won’t be charged co-pays or deductibles for preventive care like immunizations and cholesterol screening.

[...]

Starting in September, adult children younger than 26 can be added to their parent’s health policy. Some plans already extend coverage to adult dependents as long as they are full-time students. Although Health and Human Services still must announce the exact eligibility requirements, Congress deleted a restriction related to marital status.

[...]

Beginning in September, insurance companies will no longer be able to rescind a policy once someone gets sick, nor can they impose lifetime limits on coverage.

Today, honest mistakes on a lengthy insurance application — like forgetting to disclose a parent’s high blood pressure — could be grounds for losing your insurance.

Under the new rules, companies generally can’t rescind a policy for a minor application error. “The law takes away the incentive for insurance companies to look for application mistakes,” said Marian Mulkey, senior program officer with the California HealthCare Foundation. “There have been some egregious examples of someone getting cancer triggering a review of years of health history that seems very targeted and punitive.”

[...]

How the changes will affect existing insurance costs is a source of fierce debate. Over all, the Congressional Budget Office has said that by 2016, the provisions in the new law will result in little if any increase in premiums for people with employer-sponsored plans. People with nongroup plans (those not offered by employers) may see increases, but more than half the enrollees in nongroup plans will qualify for federal subsidies, lowering costs for middle- and moderate-income families on average by about 60 percent, the C.B.O. said.

Beginning in September, insurance firms will face new limits on administrative costs and executive compensation. Violations will trigger rebates to consumers. In addition, the overhaul package includes additional money for states to review unreasonable increases in insurance rates.

[...]

This year tax credits as high as 35 percent of premiums will be available to many small businesses that offer health coverage to employees.

As for these immediate taxes, not sure what he means by that, unless he's referring to eliminating tax breaks on federal subsidies to huge corporations. In 2013, by the way.

As for taxes on the middle class, there is a lot of talk, such as in this hit piece for Business Week, about "hidden taxes" that may come to pass at some point in the future:

True, most won't see direct tax hikes, per se. Few believe Obama will go back on his vow to keep income tax rates the same for all but the top brackets when the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of 2010. And top White House economic adviser Lawrence H. Summers says Obama can keep his pledge while finding more than enough cost cuts and revenue elsewhere. "There is substantial scope for expenditure reductions in health care and for raising enough revenues from people with incomes over $250,000 and from companies," he says.

A key question, though, is whether over the next couple of years, middle-income families will face a host of surcharges, fees, reduced tax breaks, or other increased costs. Daniel Clifton, a Washington-based policy analyst for Strategas Research Partners, argues that Congress has purposely loaded onto the corporate sector the increased taxes needed to pay for the reforms to avoid politically unpopular individual tax hikes. But the added costs will eventually be shifted to customers. "It all depends on what your definition of 'tax' is. Everyone is mincing words here," says Clifton. "There isn't enough money available in just extracting more from corporate taxes or rich Americans."

But beyond all that nonsense stands Fineman's main area of concern trolling for Democrats, that the health care bill is wildly unpopular and a killer for Dems in the fall. First, if you look at the polling data, many respondents who say they don't like the bill say they don't because it doesn't go far enough. I doubt that will send them into the arms of Republican candidates. But even more broadly, as we expected, once the legislative process ended and the bill signed into law, people stopped hating it so much and Dems are now seen as having accomplished something, particularly among their base voters.

I'm not sure that there's yet been enough time to assess whether the Democrats' passage of health care reform seven days ago could mitigate -- or broaden -- their losses. Most polls suggest that the health care reform bill itself has become somewhat more popular since passage. But President Obama's approval ratings are little moved, and there has thus far been little new polling on the generic ballot or perceptions of the Democratic congress. Moreover, any changes in the polling may prove to be temporary.

Still, there is one set of numbers that potentially contain relatively good news for the Democrats. These concern the enthusiasm gap, which may be lessening. Daily Kos / Research polling has found that while Republican voters remain exceptionally engaged by the midterm election cycle, Democrats are becoming increasingly engaged as well. Rasmussen, meanwhile, has found that about 5-7 percent of voters nationwide have gone from being somewhat approving of to Obama to strongly approving of him -- and almost all of the movement is accounted for by Democrats. (Obama's disapproval -- including his strongly disapprove numbers -- are little changed in the poll).

I don't want to say that health care legislation is going to be the wave that gives Democrats their permanent majority, but it is worth noting that people's views change as time goes on, that enacting legislation is typically better than cravenly refusing to because of bad poll numbers, and that Obama and the Dems are only now beginning to make the case for the legislation, while Republicans have had well over a year to denigrate it.

Quinnipiac found about a 4-5 point bump in support for the health care bill itself, although a larger bump (8 points) in Obama's handling of the issue. Obama's overall approval rating, on the other hand, was little changed.

What's a bit more surprising is that Quinnipiac also found a decent-sized bump in approval of the Democrats in Congress: from a pathetically low 30 percent to a not-quite-as-awful 36 percent. And most of the bump came from independent voters, among whom approval increased from 19 percent to 33.

Fineman, you know, comes from a long line of fools.

Brilliant deductions

Reading Robert Samuelson's plaintive query, "why, oh why, does the Obama administration get such good press?" -- To which I answer, Could it be because the administration is operating pretty well -- we learn something we hadn't known.

Are his proposals practical, even if desirable? Maybe they're neither? What might be the 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.

Really? Johnson's economic policies proved disastrous and led to '70s stagflation? That was news to me. I hoped Dean Baker could explain how that enigma had been solved. He does not disappoint.

Wow, it was Johnson and Kennedy's economic policies that caused the sharp slowdown of productivity growth in the 70s? That's impressive. For the last 35 years economists have struggled to find the explanation for the sharp slowdown in productivity growth, from close to 3.0 percent annually to 1.5 percent annually. Now Samuelson tells us he has the answer. That is really impressive.

Of course, before we give Mr. Samuelson the Nobel for this accomplishment maybe he should fill in a little more of the "how." In other words, what were the horrible things that Kennedy and Johnson did that depressed productivity growth for more than a quarter century after they left office. Whatever it was, it sure must have been really bad.

In Dean's comments you will find some better alternatives to Samuelson's inane theory.

Worse than steroids

It seems that Alex Rodriguez is now accused of something that will really lead to trouble for him: tipping pitches to opposing batters. But with all due respect to Doug Glanville, would such an egregious crime really be possible given the movement of players from team to team? Surely someone would have ratted him out long before Selena Roberts came knocking and you can bet his team's pitching staff would have been, ahem, displeased.

As for Roberts' overall charges, I think Steve Goldman fairly nails it (I'm so sick of hearing that Ms. Roberts is such "a respected writer" that her charges are unassailable).

Roberts has a weak track record in terms of thinking and knowledge of baseball, and she also led the charge against the Duke lacrosse players in the 2006 rape case, the one that ended with the prosecutor who brought charges being discharged. As Jason Whitlock wrote on Saturday, Roberts has never been called to account for these columns. Among her last words on the subject: "No one would want an innocent Duke player wronged or ruined by false charges -- and that may have occurred on Nifong's watch -- but the alleged crime and the culture are mutually exclusive... A dismissal doesn't mean forget everything. Amnesia would be a poor defense to the next act of athlete privilege."

Yes, let's look on the bright side, because jocks having slightly more restrained keg parties makes calling innocent young men rapists worthwhile.

I don't trust Roberts' judgment, I don't trust her understanding of baseball, and I don't trust her motives in writing a book about Alex Rodriguez that surely would not exist were it not intended to be a hit piece. If Rodriguez was juicing in high school or kindergarten, it goes to character, not performance, and we have had countless reasons to know that he's not Mother Theresa in the clubhouse or off the field. Neither were Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, et al. Cobb's reward was to die friendless, Ruth and Mantle died young, the causes of their cancer probably not unrelated to their youthful carousing, and Williams' own son had him decapitated and stuck in a freezer.

On the field, they all won their pennants, and for now that should be our main area of interest in regards to Mr. Rodriguez, because the personality stuff is off the slightest relevance. If Derek Jeter loves or hates Rodriguez matters less than this basic equation: Jeter singles and Rodriguez hits a home run. That's the only relationship, the only trust that needs to be between them -- and needs to be between Rodriguez and us.

Ya think?

One thing I am fairly certain of, Ms. Roberts has never much liked Mr. Rodriguez.

A-Rod’s Properties and Charity Suggest Some Stinginess

Rodriguez Is a Bauble A Champion Doesn't Need

No Longer Trying, Rodriguez Positions Himself for Success

Not a single story touched upon Alex Rodriguez's ability as a baseball player -- the only function for which he is paid and for which he has received three MVP awards, twice while wearing pinstripes.

White man's burden

I don't know, where I come from this is called RASCISM and/or MISOGYNY.

"Sleight of hand," indeed

"Sleight of hand" appears twice in this AP story regarding the budget. Curiously, no mention of the "sleight of hand" used when the tax break on wealthiest Americans in Bush's budget was set to expire in 2010 as well.

But this is rich.

Democrats point out that Obama inherited an unprecedented fiscal mess caused by the recession and the taxpayer-financed bailout of Wall Street. Rather than retrenching, however, they still promise to award big budget increases to education and clean energy programs, while assuming Obama's plans to overhaul the U.S. health care system advance.

The "unprecedented fiscal mess" was caused by the recession? As if the recession were a hurricane that could not have been predicted to drown a major American city...oh, wait.

Twitter laughs

Not sure I get the whole Twitter thing, but, as Ezra Klein says, Dave Weigel's Twitter (what, feeds? posts? twits?) are "absurdly funny."

Paul Gigot's clown show

I heard recently that the joke in the Wall St. Journal newsroom was that the paper didn't need a comics page since the editorial page served that purpose already.

The Wall Street Journal, in an unsigned editorial, took issue with President Obama having prescreened journalists at Monday’s prime-time press conference.

Since then, the paper has been flooded with responses from readers who consider the conservative editorial board adopting a double standard, according to a source.

In November, I reported that Obama held transition press conferences with a list of reporters to call on, so it's not a completely new press strategy that the Journal took issue with. Of course, it's well within the editorial board's right to criticize this practice if they see fit.

However, one line stood out with critics: “We doubt that President Bush, who was notorious for being parsimonious with follow-ups, would have gotten away with prescreening his interlocutors.”

Of course, Bush did prescreen reporters. Media Matters noted that Bush joked in a press conference once about it being scripted. And on Monday night, Ari Fleischer talked on Fox about preparing a list or reporters before the president's press conferences.

Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot, through a spokesman, said the editorial speaks for itself.

Well, does it? It would be easy to see the Journal’s point if it the editorial board called out both Bush and Obama for this practice, or simply noted that, in their opinion, the media lets Obama get away with things Bush never would.

But the editorial still gives the impression that the Bush team didn't preselect jounalists, when in fact they clearly did.

I expect Gigot and the clown car otherwise knows as the WSJ editorial section will grow increasingly unhinged. It's encouraging though that readers and some other media outlets are calling them on it.

All the good news that's fit to print

From today's op-ed page:

Maureen Dowd and Thomas L. Friedman are off today.

Ice Cream for Crow

I anticipated that hacks like Gerson would lament that liberals aren't outraged by Obama's pragmatic Cabinet picks. But no! Instead, he invents a strawman as evidence of their outrage.

It is tempting for conservatives to crow -- or liberals to lament -- that Barack Obama's victory has somehow produced John McCain's administration. But this partisan reaction trivializes some developments that, while early and tentative, are significant.

He points to no specific liberals doing any such lamenting. Not even when it comes to specific picks, where surely he could have found someone to make his case.

But in true Gerson fashion, he cautions conservatives not to crow...then goes on to do just that.

Second, Obama's appointments reveal something important about current Bush policies. Though Obama's campaign savaged the administration as incompetent and radical, Obama's personnel decisions have effectively ratified Bush's defense and economic approaches during the past few years. At the Pentagon, Obama rehired the architects of President Bush's current military strategy -- Gates, Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Raymond Odierno. At the Treasury Department, Obama has hired one of the main architects of Bush's current economic approach.

This continuity does not make Obama an ideological traitor. It indicates that Bush has been pursuing centrist, bipartisan policies -- without getting much bipartisan support. The transition between Bush and Obama is smoother than some expected, not merely because Obama has moderate instincts but because Bush does as well. Particularly on the economy, Bush has never been a libertarian; he has always matched a commitment to free markets with a willingness to intervene when markets stumble.

Crow he may, but he's deluded. Where to start? Maybe with the fact that while Obama has no desire to disrupt military operations by changing commanders before the inauguration, he's made clear to Petraeus that, while he values his advice, the president is the C-in-C, something Bush delegated, originally to Rumsfeld, then to Petraeus. And Gates, it's clear, never bought in to Rumsfeld's defense policies, and it's also clear that big changes are coming to the Pentagon.

And hiring the "main architect of Bush's current economic approach"? Um, I think not.

Gerson has simply never learned that wishing doesn't make it so.

What is it good for?

Shorter Bill Kristol:

India's best response to the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last week is an all-out war with Pakistan.

No link to the dull, predictable hack. He's at www.nytimes.com if you want to read it.

When shit tastes like butter

Did the same Peter Baker write this...

...friends say that Bush, who just turned 62, has been looser lately, more relaxed, more willing to joke around and even do a little dance for the cameras from time to time....

Whatever the president’s virtues, they remain unappreciated in his own time....

If anything, it may be that the low numbers have become almost a badge of honor for Bush....

Donald Ensenat, a friend of Bush’s for more than 40 years who worked as his chief of protocol before stepping down last year, said that the president’s view, as he paraphrased it, has come down to this: “I’ve already taken my last licks for being unpopular, so these last two years I do what’s right — that’s my job, not with my finger in the air.”...

Stoicism has been a hallmark of his second term....

and this?

The selection of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska proved quintessentially McCain — daring, hazardous and defiantly off-message.

If so, he had quite a weekend, and I must really rethink my subscription to The New York [End] Times.

Sure enough.

The New York Times Styleguide

It's been updated. Now, every time a "liberal" OpEd columnist wants to write about Hillary Clinton, a mention of a Hepburn/Tracy movie must follow.

The other persistent gripe among some Clinton supporters is that a hard-working older woman has been unjustly usurped by a cool young guy intrinsically favored by a sexist culture. Slate posted a devilish video mash-up of the classic 1999 movie “Election”: Mrs. Clinton is reduced to a stand-in for Tracy Flick, the diligent candidate for high school president played by Reese Witherspoon, and Mr. Obama is implicitly cast as the mindless jock who upsets her by dint of his sheer, unearned popularity.

There is undoubtedly some truth to this, however demeaning it may be to both candidates, but in reality, the more consequential ur-text for the Clinton 2008 campaign may be another Hollywood classic, the Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy “Pat and Mike” of 1952. In that movie, the proto-feminist Hepburn plays a professional athlete who loses a tennis or golf championship every time her self-regarding fiancé turns up in the crowd, pulling her focus and undermining her confidence with his grandstanding presence.

In the 2008 real-life remake of “Pat and Mike,” it’s not the fiancé, of course, but the husband who has sabotaged the heroine. The single biggest factor in Hillary Clinton’s collapse is less sexism in general than one man in particular — the man who began the campaign as her biggest political asset. The moment Bill Clinton started trash-talking about Mr. Obama and raising the specter of a co-presidency, even to the point of giving his own televised speech ahead of his wife’s on the night she lost South Carolina, her candidacy started spiraling downward.

Some truth to it? What, exactly is his point?

Letting Limbaugh write her column

Maureen Dowd takes her hackism and misogyny to whole new levels. How many words can you find in Rogets for "hag?"

And so the inevitable came to pass this week when Rush Limbaugh began riffing about an unflattering picture of Hillary in New Hampshire that Matt Drudge put up on his Web site with the caption, “The Toll of a Campaign.”

“So the question is this,” the radio personality said. “Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?”

Observing that Hillary is stuck with a looks-obsessed culture and that the presidency ages its occupants, including W., Limbaugh observed that “men aging makes them look more authoritative, accomplished, distinguished. Sadly, it’s not that way for women, and they will tell you.”

And Hillary, he noted, “is not going to want to look like she’s getting older, because it will impact poll numbers, it will impact perceptions.” So, he added, “there will have to be steps taken to avoid the appearance of aging.”

He said that voters lean toward attractive men, too, and that since TV, it’s less likely that a bloated “fat-guy” president would get elected — recalling that some were gauging whether Al Gore would run by checking his weight.

Limbaugh finished up with this: “Let me give you a picture, just to think about. ... The campaign is Mitt Romney vs. Hillary Clinton in our quest in this country for visual perfection, hmm?”

Paul Costello, who was an aide to Rosalynn Carter and Kitty Dukakis, calls this “the snake belly of the campaign,” and notes drily: “We’ve been staring at aging white men from the beginning of the democracy.”

Yet if you were beginning to think that a chastened MoDo was going to defend her fellow woman of a certain age, you haven't been paying attention for the past decade.

Yet it’s true that looks matter in politics, even though Abe Lincoln still ranks as our favorite president. J.F.K.’s tan and Nixon’s 5-o’clock shadow helped turn that 1960 debate in Kennedy’s favor, just as Gore’s waxy orange makeup and condescending mien hurt him in a debate with W.

Well that bit of disingenuous blather was inevitable, wasn't it? As is this.

An older Iowa man, who saw her this week in Le Mars, was impressed. “Hillary is much more handsome — or beautiful — live,” he told The Times’s Jeff Zeleny. “She doesn’t photograph very well.”

Since this is the first time we’ve had a woman who was a serious contender for president, it’s been an adjustment to watch her more changeable looks, and to see the lengths she goes to get the right lighting and to make the right wardrobe choices. She has a much more consistent look than she did as first lady, when she made a dizzying — and disconcerting — array of changes in her hair and style.

Hillary doesn’t have to worry about her face. She has to worry about her mask. Back in the ’92 race, Clinton pollsters devised strategies to humanize her and make her seem more warm and maternal. Fifteen years later, her campaign is devising strategies to humanize her and make her seem more warm and maternal.

With that kind of analysis, another Pulitzer can only be just around the corner.

Where's the irony?

I wonder if Michael Powell was again merely being "ironic," when he writes in today's Times,

Political leadership is an uncertain alchemy, an admixture of the symbolic and substantive and the visceral. In times of consuming trauma, psychologists and historians say, a leader must speak with a trusted voice and sketch honestly the painful steps to safety. A leader must weave a narrative of shared loss while acknowledging consuming anger.

All this Mr. Giuliani accomplished, mourning the dead, comforting the grieving and cheering the living even as the police and the National Guard moved in. His critics have lambasted the rescue failures at ground zero and argued that his inattention before 9/11 cost lives.

But his performance shone brighter for the implicit comparison with President George W. Bush, who initially appeared — fairly or not — frozen in his chair, listening to second graders read as a nation came under attack.

Mr. Giuliani declined to be interviewed for this article.

Why should he, when Powell writes so eloquently on his behalf.

Here's our intrepid reporter, back in June, in response to criticism on a previous ode to Giuliani's Ovidian shape changing.

Your mama needs to reinsert the irony squiggly in your DNA. But congratulations: It's really hard to read that piece [his article] and take every single word seriously, but you done it. Another irony-immune blogger. You go dude.

He can write, but he's a hack.