Minor Thoughts from me to you

Robert Hanson suggests that we cut our healthcare spending by up to 50%. Why?

Am I being too allegorical? Then let me speak plainly: our main problem in health policy is a huge overemphasis on medicine. The U.S. spends one sixth of national income on medicine, more than on all manufacturing. But health policy experts know that we see at best only weak aggregate relations between health and medicine, in contrast to apparently strong aggregate relations between health and many other factors, such as exercise, diet, sleep, smoking, pollution, climate, and social status. Cutting half of medical spending would seem to cost little in health, and yet would free up vast resources for other health and utility gains. To their shame, health experts have not said this loudly and clearly enough.

So I want to say loudly and clearly what has yet to be said loudly and clearly enough: In the aggregate, variations in medical spending usually show no statistically significant medical effect on health. (At least they do not in studies with enough good controls.) It has long been nearly a consensus among those who have reviewed the relevant studies that differences in aggregate medical spending show little relation to differences in health, compared to other factors like exercise or diet. I not only want to make this point clearly; I want to dare other health policy experts to either publicly agree or disagree with this claim and its apparent policy implications.

How much could we cut? For the U.S. it seems reasonable to project the 30% cut in the RAND results to a 50% cut, since the U.S. spends so much more than other nations without obvious extra health gains. I thus claim: we could cut U.S. medical spending in half without substantial net health costs. This would give us the equivalent of an 8% pay raise.

As Hanson notes, his recommendations are not likely to be implemented soon -- or at all. So how can you benefit yourself?

Do you have little voice in health policy or research? Then at least you can change your own medical behavior: if you would not pay for medicine out of your own pocket, then don't bother to go when others offer to pay; the RAND experiment strongly suggests that on average such medicine is as likely to hurt as to help.

If this intrigues you, if you find yourself saying "It can't be true", then do go read the full essay. I just pulled four paragraphs out of a much, much longer argument.

He really does believe that more medicine is as likely to hurt you as it is to help you. Doctors make mistakes, just like everyone else. The best way to reduce your risk of mistakes is to reduce your exposure to hospitals, clinics, and medical professionals. QED.

From the New York Times: Syria Is Said to Be Strengthening Ties to Opponents of Iraq's Government

Syria is encouraging Sunni Arab insurgent groups and former Iraqi Baathists with ties to the leaders of Saddam Hussein's government to organize [in Damascus], diplomats and Syrian political analysts say. By building strong ties to those groups, they say, Syria hopes to gain influence in Iraq before what it sees as the inevitable waning of the American presence there.

In July, former Baathists opposed to the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki scheduled a conference for insurgent groups -- including two of the most prominent, the 1920s Revolution Brigades and Ansar al Sunna -- at the Sahara Resort outside Damascus.

The meeting followed two others in Syria in January that aimed to form an opposition front to the government of Iraq, and an announcement in Damascus in July of the formation of a coalition of seven Sunni Arab insurgent groups with the goal of coordinating and intensifying attacks in Iraq to force an American withdrawal. That coalition has since expanded to incorporate other groups.

The July conference was canceled at the last minute, however, indicating the political perils of Syria's developing strategy. It was called off by the government of President Bashar al-Assad, participants, diplomats and analysts said, primarily because of pressure from Iran.

Iran is Syria's chief ally and a staunch supporter of Iraq's Shiite-dominated government. The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, visited Damascus just days before the conference was to have taken place.

"Iran is the big player in Iraq," said Mr. Hamidi, of Al Hayat, "but it lacks influence on the Baathists and the Sunnis."

That would seem to create a natural opening for Syria, a predominantly Sunni country governed by its own version of the Baath Party. But its relations with the Iraqi Baathists have long been strained. Syria backed Iran in its war with Iraq in the 1980s and supported the United States against Mr. Hussein during the Persian Gulf war of 1991.

Syria has long had a regional strategy of influencing its neighbors' politics by harboring their opposition groups. Washington imposed economic sanctions on Syria in 2004 for, among other things, its support of Hamas and several other militant Palestinian groups.

Suspected of orchestrating the 2005 assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, Syria has also come under increasing pressure from the United States and France for its support of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia.

I can think of two possibilities here, neither of them particularly good. The first is that Syria wants to escape from Iran's shadow. Iran is busy trying to establish influence over Iraq's Shiite parties. Perhaps Syria wants to establish influence of Iraq's Sunni and Baathist parties, in an attempt to outflank Iran. However, I just don't see Syria having the will to actually go against Iran.

The second possibility is that Iran is using Syria to establish even more control over Iraq. While Iran establishes influence over the Shiite parties, Syria establishes influence over the Sunni parties. Together, they play the Iraqi government like fiddles.

Perhaps. The whole situation is muddled by the fact that Iran told Syria to knock it. Pique at Syria's attempts? Wanting to hide the strategy before it gets too obvious? Something else? I don't know, but I'm worried about the whole situation.

About a month ago, the Israeli Defense Force bombed a target inside Syria. This is a bit of a problem for Syria.

If you believe the Syrian foreign minister, then the Israelis flew through the heart of his nation's air defenses--apparently undetected--to strike at targets near the country's eastern border. And it wouldn't be the first time that the IAF has accomplished such a feat; in 2003, Israeli jets struck a Palestinian terrorist complex near Damascus, taking advantage of confusion within the Syrian air defense system to bomb the target and escape, with no reaction from fighters or ground-based air defenses. The success of this particular raid suggests that despite a reported shake-up of the Syria's air defense organization, the system remains incapable of defeating an Israeli attack.

And, making matters worse, the IDF raid apparently included a ground attack, featuring commandos that were (presumably) ferried in by helicopter. While IAF CH-53 Sea Stallions have the range (540 NM) to reach distant targets, getting the chopper(s) and the commandos in and out of enemy territory was indeed an impressive feat. Apparently, the Syrians fared no better against the heliborne element of the mission than they did against the IAF jets. However, given the location of the target area--and initial Syrian comments about Israeli aircraft "coming out of Turkey," it's quite possible that the helicopters (and commando elements) staged from a "foreign" base.

The initial speculation was that the Israeli's were targeting a nuclear facility in Syria. More worisome was the idea that the facility was courtesy of the North Koreans.

But the real stunner in the Times report comes in the sixth paragraph, with this revelation from an unnamed member of the Bush Administration:

One Bush administration official said Israel had recently carried out reconnaissance flights over Syria, taking pictures of possible nuclear installations that Israeli officials believed might have been supplied with material from North Korea. The administration official said Israeli officials believed that North Korea might be unloading some of its nuclear material on Syria.

"The Israelis think North Korea is selling to Iran and Syria what little they have left," the official said. He said it was unclear whether the Israeli strike had produced any evidence that might validate that belief.

The possible transfer of "nuclear material" from North Korea to other rogue states is something we've written about at length, including this most recent installment. Fact is, we don't know the full extent of the "relationship" between Pyongyang, Tehran and Damascus. Clearly, North Korea has been the primary source of ballistic missile technology for both Iran and Syria; both countries have active WMD programs and an interest in acquiring nuclear weapons. But clear evidence of a nuclear transfer has never been offered, at least publicly.

The Israeli attacks looks like a major success for Israel and a major embarrassment for Syria.

Obviously, the Israeli strategy worked; the operation caught Damascus by surprise (there was apparently little reaction from Syria's air defense system); the Israelis inflicted serious damage on the target, and both the F-15I crews and the commandos escaped unscathed. Syria has threatened retaliation, but its options are limited. The odds of Syrian aircraft penetrating Israeli airspace are slim, and a missile strike would invite a devastating response, as would an attack across the Golan Heights.

Still, the Times article leaves a number of questions unanswered. We'll begin with the issue of Israel successfully penetrating Syria's air defense system. While it's happened before, the Syrian air defense network was supposedly re-organized after an embarrassing 2003 Israeli strike against a Palestinian terrorist camp near Damascus. During that raid, the Israelis reportedly exploited confusion over geographic responsibilities within the Syrian defense system. The most recent mission--which involved a much deeper penetration into Syrian territory--suggests that (a) Bashir Assad's air defense network hasn't improved, or (b) the Israelis are using more advanced measures to target the system, and render it impotent.

Then, there's the matter of that commando team. If the Times is correct, those personnel arrived in the target area a day ahead of the fighters, inserted (we'll assume) by Israeli Sea Stallion helicopters. As we've noted before, the successful infiltration of a commando team by helicopter, deep into Syrian territory, is an impressive operational feat, indeed. But getting the commandos (and their choppers) all the way across Syria (and back again), undetected, represents a monumental challenge, even for a state-of-the-art military like the IDF.

The success of the raid has given Iran serious concerns as well.

According to Strategy Page, Iran is a bit upset over the alleged "failure" of Russian air defense systems during the raid. Both Tehran and Damascus have spent billions on radar and missile systems built in Russia, with the assurance that such equipment could defend against an Israeli attack. Complaints that have made their way onto Farsi-language message boards (presumably from Iranian military officers) suggest that the IAF was able to blind Syria's defensive systems, rendering them useless. The Israeli strike package flew across hundreds of miles of Syrian airspace, strike the target and return, unmolested by air defense systems.

Iran's concerns are three-fold. First, there is logical speculation that the recent raid on Syria was a dress rehearsal for an attack on Iran's nuclear sites, although that raid would be larger and much more complex. Secondly, Tehran is footing the bill for Syria's most recent upgrade, the acquisition of the Pantsir-S1 air defense system. Iran is also slated to acquire the system, although initial deliveries were made to Damascus.

Equipped with two 30mm cannon and twelve Tunguska missiles, the Pantsir-S1 was supposed to provide point-defense for high-value targets--like that Syrian nuclear facility. The system's on-board radar can detect medium-altitude targets up to 30 miles away; the Pantsir's cannons are effective against targets up to 10,000 feet, and the missiles have a maximum range of roughly nine miles. In terms of close-in air defense, the Pantsir is supposed to be state-of-the-art, but it (apparently) proved ineffective against the Israeli raid.

Tehran's third concern? The Iranian air defense network is far more chaotic than its Syrian counterpart. In recent years, there have been credible reports about Iranian fighters sent out in pursuit of mystery lights and "UFOs," and near-fratricide incidents involving civilian airliners. If the Israelis were successful in blinding Syria's more centralized system (which covers a relatively small area), then they should have little problem in creating mass confusion within the Iranian network. Assuming that Israel eventually attacks, Iranian air defense crews could find themselves operating in a de-centralized mode, chasing targets that don't exist, and illuminating their radars with the knowledge that an anti-radar missile may be on the way.

Finally, the U.S. recently confirmed to ABC News that Israel did indeed bomb a nuclear facility in Syria.

The September Israeli airstrike on a suspected nuclear site in Syria had been in the works for months, ABC News has learned, and was delayed only at the strong urging of the United States.

In early July the Israelis presented the United States with satellite imagery that they said showed a nuclear facility in Syria. They had additional evidence that they said showed that some of the technology was supplied by North Korea.

One U.S. official told ABC's Martha Raddatz the material was "jaw dropping" because it raised questions as to why U.S. intelligence had not previously picked up on the facility.

Officials said that the facility had likely been there for months if not years.

"Israel tends to be very thorough about its intelligence coverage, particularly when it takes a major military step, so they would not have acted without data from several sources," said ABC military consultant Tony Cordesman.

Some in the administration supported the Israeli action, but others, notably Sect. of State Condoleeza Rice did not. One senior official said the U.S. convinced the Israelis to "confront Syria before attacking."

Officials said they were concerned about the impact an attack on Syria would have on the region. And given the profound consequences of the flawed intelligence in Iraq, the U.S. wanted to be absolutely certain the intelligence was accurate.

Initially, administration officials convinced the Israelis to call off the July strike. But in September the Israelis feared that news of the site was about to leak and went ahead with the strike despite U.S. concerns.

Jules Crittenden wonders what kind of stability the State Department was trying to protect.

There's the stability enforced by dictatorial regimes in places as Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia. There's the stability places like Lebanon and Iraq are barely managing to maintain ... no thanks to Syria, Iran, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Palestinians, etc., but thanks in large part to the Lebanese Army, the Israeli Defense Forces and the United States military. There's the stability of Gaza, accomplished in part when one group of Palestinian terrorists decided to throw the other group of Palestinian terrorists off rooftops, but really thanks to the Israeli Defense Forces, which make it impossible for either group to be much more than a nuisance. There's the stability of the West Bank, where they've had enough.

Anyway, so Israel gets the nod, blows up the Syrian nukes, and what happens? Nothing. Syria is hardly likely to want another humiliating ass-kicking. That leaves terrorism. ... That'd be different.

Just kidding. Except that ever since Israel introduced some stability to Lebanon, Hezbollah hasn't been quite on its game. The Lebs, meanwhile, appear to have watched and learned from the Israelis. Blowing the crap out of terrorists and those who harbor them works. It can actually introduce stability to places where stability had been wanting. So the Lebs have been taking care of business in the camps.

Just for the record, I fully support Israel's actions in humiliating Syria, scaring Iran, and reducing the threat the terrorist nutters in Hezbollah will get the bomb. Thank-you for doing what we won't and thank-you for seeing what we couldn't.

I've enjoyed most of the TV shows that Tim Minear has worked on -- Angel, Firefly, Wonderfalls, and Drive. Unfortunately, three of those four were canceled after 13 episodes or less. Fortunately, Tim Minear gets another chance.

"Miracle" -- from 20th Century Fox TV, where Minear and Holland are based with overall deals -- centers on a disgraced former televangelist, a man of no faith, who finds that God is using him to perform real miracles and change lives, starting with his own.

"It's about losing everything and starting over and finding that there is a higher purpose in life," Minear said. "It's about a man who says, 'I don't know how to be good, but I'll try to be better.' "

Televangelism is a familiar territory for Minear, who had an evangelical upbringing in Whittier, Calif., and went to evangelical schools. His father is a radio engineer for religious programming. While he was growing up, Minear often listened to preachers as they taped their programs in his dad's home studio.

"Miracle" also was influenced by the series of sex and accounting fraud scandals that rocked the televangelist industry in the 1980s and brought disgrace to such heavyweights as Jimmy Swaggart, Marvin Gorman and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. Others, like Peter Popoff, were exposed as a sham.

But "Miracle" "is not in any way an indictment to religion," Minear said. "It's a love letter to the religious."

What attracted him to the idea of doing a show about a disgraced televangelist was that "I love the genre, and I love stories about redemption and stories about characters that are slightly cynical and nudged by higher force," Minear said.

I'm already looking forward to it.

It used to be that a person had a reasonable expectation of privacy. Now? The government snoops on you through your children. Woe be to the person that does anything the government finds questionable.

I found this out after my 13-year-old daughter's annual checkup. Her pediatrician grilled her about alcohol and drug abuse.

Not my daughter's boozing. Mine.

"The doctor wanted to know how much you and mom drink, and if I think it's too much," my daughter told us afterward, rolling her eyes in that exasperated 13-year-old way. "She asked if you two did drugs, or if there are drugs in the house."

I turned to my wife. "You took her to the doctor. Why didn't you say something?"

She couldn't, she told me, because she knew nothing about it. All these questions were asked in private, without my wife's knowledge or consent.

"The doctor wanted to know how we get along," my daughter continued. Then she paused. "And if, well, Daddy, if you made me feel uncomfortable."

Great. I send my daughter to the pediatrician to find out if she's fit to play lacrosse, and the doctor spends her time trying to find out if her mom and I are drunk, drug-addicted sex criminals.

That's just disturbing, on so many levels. I absolutely hate the idea that the government would automatically consider me to be a danger to my children and would snoop behind my back looking for any evidence to convict me and take them away from me.

It gets worse.

We're not alone, either. Thanks to guidelines issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics and supported by the commonwealth, doctors across Massachusetts are interrogating our kids about mom and dad's "bad" behavior.

The paranoia over parents is so strong that the AAP encourages doctors to ignore "legal barriers and deference to parental involvement" and shake the children down for all the inside information they can get.

And that information doesn't stay with the doctor, either.

Debbie is a mom from Uxbridge who was in the examination room when the pediatrician asked her 5-year-old, "Does Daddy own a gun?"

When the little girl said yes, the doctor began grilling her and her mom about the number and type of guns, how they are stored, etc.

If the incident had ended there, it would have merely been annoying.

But when a friend in law enforcement let Debbie know that her doctor had filed a report with the police about her family's (entirely legal) gun ownership, she got mad.

Ya think? These doctors are state officials are turning lawful actions into near crimes. What gives them the authority to do that?

And people wonder why I have such a strong dislike for doctors. Maybe it's because so many of them think that it's their God-given right to be interfering, know-it-all, tin-pot dictators in charge of making sure society is healthy and pure.

Hardly.

The function of the appendix seems related to the massive amount of bacteria populating the human digestive system, according to the study in the Journal of Theoretical Biology. There are more bacteria than human cells in the typical body. Most of it is good and helps digest food.

But sometimes the flora of bacteria in the intestines die or are purged. Diseases such as cholera or amoebic dysentery would clear the gut of useful bacteria. The appendix's job is to reboot the digestive system in that case.

The appendix "acts as a good safe house for bacteria," said Duke surgery professor Bill Parker, a study co-author. Its location -- just below the normal one-way flow of food and germs in the large intestine in a sort of gut cul-de-sac -- helps support the theory, he said.

Also, the worm-shaped organ outgrowth acts like a bacteria factory, cultivating the good germs, Parker said.

That use is not needed in a modern industrialized society, Parker said. If a person's gut flora dies, they can usually repopulate it easily with germs they pick up from other people, he said. But before dense populations in modern times and during epidemics of cholera that affected a whole region, it wasn't as easy to grow back that bacteria and the appendix came in handy.

In less developed countries, where the appendix may be still useful, the rate of appendicitis is lower than in the U.S., other studies have shown, Parker said.

He said the appendix may be another case of an overly hygienic society triggering an overreaction by the body's immune system.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Republican voters are skeptical about the benefits of free trade.

By a nearly two-to-one margin, Republican voters believe free trade is bad for the U.S. economy, a shift in opinion that mirrors Democratic views and suggests trade deals could face high hurdles under a new president.

Six in 10 Republicans in the poll agreed with a statement that free trade has been bad for the U.S. and said they would agree with a Republican candidate who favored tougher regulations to limit foreign imports. That represents a challenge for Republican candidates who generally echo Mr. Bush's calls for continued trade expansion, and reflects a substantial shift in sentiment from eight years ago.

Frank Newport, at USA Today, says that the poll is largely worthless.

This type of question, often used by the pollsters who conduct the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, is both complex and tricky to interpret.

In essence, the question format gives respondents a set of several reasons to support the subject of the question (in this instance foreign trade) and several reasons to oppose the subject of the question. The respondent is then asked to indicate which set of reasons is most convincing to them.

Thus, the pro and con arguments read as part of the question become very important. In other words, when the topic is something relatively arcane, many respondents listen to the cues presented as the interviewer reads the question and then give their answer based on what seems to resonate most "on the spot". Or - if the respondent is not listening carefully - responses are based on which fragments or phrases sound most appealing.

The Nation Association of Manufacturers does see some cause for concern.

What's happening? The Lou Dobbs effect? The media's incessant hyping of contaminated food and other imports? Just more of the anti-foreign bias as detailed by George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan* in his new book, "The Myth of the Rational Voter?" Or are the advocates of free-trade not working hard enough?

Yes.

We advocates simply have to work harder in making the case for trade in terms that the public can appreciate, connecting good-paying jobs to trade. And not let the anti-trade rhetoric stand unchallenged. Because protectionism makes us poor.

Meanwhile, if voters are potentially misunderstanding the issue, at least the candidates themselves are getting better advice. Here is Barack Obama's economic adviser on free trade.

"Globalization" means free trade and various deregulations that supposedly put downward pressure on American wages because of imports from low-wage countries. Goolsbee, however, says globalization is responsible for "a small fraction" of today's income disparities. He says "60 to 70 percent of the economy faces virtually no international competition." America's 18.5 million government employees have little to fear from free trade; neither do auto mechanics, dentists and many others.

Goolsbee's rough estimate is that technology -- meaning all that the phrase "information economy" denotes -- accounts for more than 80 percent of the increase in earnings disparities, whereas trade accounts for much less than 20 percent. This is something congressional Democrats need to hear from a Democratic economist as they resist trade agreements with South Korea and such minor economic powers as Peru, Panama and Colombia.

So -- stay in school, get an education, become rich. What's not to like? (Oh, and keep both goods and people flowing freely over the border.)

Greg Mankiw hosted a brief back-and-forth about the State Children's Health Insurance Program and how it will be renewed. First, the President's position.

1. We think the "C" in SCHIP stands for "children". Over the past several years, adults have been added to SCHIP. Some were parents of kids with health insurance, others were adults without children. We were responsible for some of those additions, as we approved State waiver requests. We made a policy shift this year, based in part on further input from the Congress, and we're now returning SCHIP to its original purpose. Over the next few years, our policy will return SCHIP to a kids-only program. States that are now covering adults will have to move them onto Medicaid or a State program. While the advocates for HR 976 argue they share this goal, the bill doesn't match the rhetoric - it lets adults in some states back into SCHIP. And in six States (IL, NJ, MI, RI, NM, and MN), more than half of their projected SCHIP expenditures this year are for adults. We think this is the wrong direction for a program that should be about children.

2. We think SCHIP should be about helping poor kids. This bill also raises taxes to subsidize health insurance for some middle-income kids. New York wants to use Federal dollars to cover kids who are clearly not poor: for a family of four, they would like to use Federal tax dollars to pay 65% of health insurance costs for a family of four with income as high as $82,600. (We measure this in terms of a multiple of the "poverty line" - NY wants to cover kids up to "400% of poverty".)

Next up, the Democrats position.

(1) The President supports a proposal that would reduce annual spending on SCHIP relative to inflation and reduce the number of covered children and pregnant women by 840,000 according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

You might ask how the $5 billion increase in spending over 5 years promised by the White House could result in more uninsured. The answer is that for technical reasons the CBO baseline assumes $5 billion in nominal dollars annually going forward, something depicted in the flat green line in your previous post. But spending at this baseline would fall relative to general price inflation and plummet relative to health spending growth. As a result, under CBO's baseline the number of people covered would fall from 7.4 million in 2006 to 3.5 million in 2017, despite an increase in the eligible population.

He says that like it's a bad thing. Unless you assume that the government should be the great health fairy in the sky guaranteeing a doctor in every pot and a nurse in every garage. Or something like that.

To be fair, the response does end this way:

You believe in a smaller government. But in this case there's no free lunch. The White House veto will deliver a smaller government but at the cost of a reduction in the number of currently eligible low-income children covered by SCHIP and an increase in the number of uninsured. You might have better ideas about to reduce the number of uninsured children. But I have a hard time seeing how a Presidential veto could be one of them.

I do have ideas. (One day I'll even write about them.) But part of reforming a system involves avoiding the urge to break it even more than it's already broken. I fear the new SCHIP bill would make it much harder to scale back government involvement later. And that's how a Presidential veto of a bad idea could be one of the ways to reduce the number of uninsured children.

Anyway, if you haven't understanding the back and forth blather (or just haven't cared), this is a good overview of both positions.

Pajamas Media: Mullahs vs. Mullahs (Part 1)

A power struggle is in progress in Iran. Is there anyone to root for or is the reform faction a myth? Banafsheh Zand-Bonnazi defines the players and their relationships - as complicated and bloody as the Medici - in a new series for Pajamas Media.

Never lose sight of the tireless battle necessary to protect out freedoms.

The National Anti- Quartering Association, America's foremost Third Amendment rights group, held its annual gala in Washington Monday to honor 191 consecutive years of advocating the protection of private homes and property against the unlawful boarding of military personnel.

The NAQA was created in 1816 in response to repeated violations of the Third Amendment during the War of 1812. The organization quickly grew in influence and cites its vigilance as the primary reason why the amendment has only been litigated once in a federal court since the Bill of Rights was ratified. The organization is also arguably the country's most powerful political lobby; every politician elected since 1866 has fully supported Third Amendment rights.

Earlier this year, James Dobson stated that he would never endorse Fred Thompson for President. (Not only that, Dobson decided to question Thompson's faith, without every actually meeting him.) I like the way Thompson recently responded.

A gentleman who has never met me, who has never talked to me, I've never talked to him on the phone. I did have one of his aides call me up and kind of apologize, the first time he attacked me and said I wasn't a Christian...

I don't know the gentleman. I do know that I have a lot of people who are of strong faith and are involved in the same organizations that he is in, that I've met with, Jeri and I both have met with, and I like to think that we have some strong friendships and support there...

I don't particularly care to have a conversation with him. If he wants to call up and apologize again, that's ok with me. But I'm not going to dance to anybody's tune.

I don't know if I'll vote for him. But I like him anyway.

The Capital Times is one of the local newspapers, here in Dane County, Wisconsin. I refuse to subscribe to it, as it's pretty much a mouthpiece for the local Democrat party and the "progressives" of Progressive Dane. My most frequent name for the Cap Times is "that liberal rag".

Ahem. I say all of that to set the stage for this article on the budget stalemate. For starters, it's titled "Republicans Face Tough Choices in Budget Battle". It start out like this:

As state budget talks drag on, Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch, R-West Salem, faces a series of increasingly difficult choices.

He can give Senate Democrats and Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle some or all of the tax and spending increases they want -- a move that would cost him support within his own party and could force him to seek up to 25 Democratic votes to pass the budget in his house.

Or Huebsch can exercise the so-called "nuclear option" by refusing to give in to the Democrats on taxes and blocking adoption of a final budget -- a move that would blow up the entire budget process and throw the state into fiscal uncertainty.

All of which is true enough, but incredibly slanted. After all, Democrats "face tough choices in the budget battle". They could compromise too. But they won't. And the Cap Times is on their side, so it pretends that only the Republicans can (and should) compromise. Instead that liberal rag presents the entire battle as one Republican obstruction after another. Never mind that the Democrats have ignored every budget compromise that Speaker Huebsch has presented.

I think what I'm trying to say is, there's two sides to every story. It'd be nice of the local papers ever presented more than one side.

I'm having fun watching the budget stalemate, here in Wisconsin. In case you weren't aware, we're the only state in the nation without a finished budget. Right now, our Governor is a Democrat, our Senate is controlled by the Democrats, but our Assembly is controlled by the Republicans. The Governor and Senate are pushing for a budget that includes new taxes and new spending. The Assembly is pushing for a budget with limited new spending and no new taxes.

So far, the Assembly is winning -- by virtue of the fact that they've gone 13 weeks without caving to Democrat demands and giving away the house on taxes. Frankly, I'm stunned. I never thought the Assembly Republicans had that much collective spine in them.

I think the Democrats are growing desperate. Despite supposedly having a superior bargaining ability, they've been completely unable to push through their preferred version of the budget. Now, they're proposing that police offers "arrest" any lawmakers who don't show up for budget negotiations and force them to negotiate.

Their "Budget Deadline Enforcement Act" is cute, but it can't pass without Republican backing. I think that's hilarious. The Democrats have been reduced to making empty threats to try to hide their impotence.

Fortunately, last year's budget stays in effect until a new one is passed. That being the case: Go, Republicans, Go!

I think we're making progress in the War on Terror -- both in Iraq and in the rest of the world. Here is my evidence for tonight.

American Thinker: A Quiet Triumph May be Brewing

There are signs that the global Islamic jihad movement is splitting apart, in what would be a tremendous achievement for American strategy. The center of the action is in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the very territory which is thought to harbor Usama, and from which Al Qaeda was able to launch 9/11. Capitalizing on existing splits, a trap was set and closed, and the benefits have only begun to be evident.

There were already signs of a split, but recent events strengthen that trend. In March and again in May of this year I reviewed relevant South Asian media reporting to predict that the global Islamic jihad movement was cracking up. That theory focused on a split between the leadership of al Qaeda and the jihad groups that secure them in Pakistan such as the Taliban.

He is probably the most responsible for turning the Taliban -- which he had a significant hand in creating -- against al Qaeda. Which means, believe it or not, on some level he may be working with the Pakistani government and possibly the US government, since he is purely an opportunist. No doubt he will not advertise that fact to his jihadists buddies.

This cannot be overstated: it is the most crucial development since the capture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Cutting al Qaeda's support in Pakistan has been a massive coup, of which our media has no clue of right now. It is the exact sort of thing that the Democrats and their media accomplices always complain that we are not doing and then completely ignore when we do it.

Check it out.

Next up, casualties in Iraq have been falling sharply lately -- both civilian and military. The media is doing their best to ignore it, Senator Clinton is doing her best to deny it, but it's happening.

Engram, at the Back Talk blog, has been crunching the numbers for the past week or more.

As you can see, deaths caused by Shiite militias in Baghdad dropped instantaneously when the troop surge began to unfold. This occurred because Muqtada al Sadr cooperated with US efforts by pulling his fighters off the streets as the new troops began to arrive. Up until that time, his Mahdi Army was eradicating Sunni males in an effort to quash al Qaeda suicide bombings against Shiite civilians. Note that there were other deaths occurring in Baghdad over this period, but this chart shows the number attributable just to Shiite death squads.

The next amazing chart shows the number of people killed by suicide bombers in Iraq. The IBC database has a field that describes "weapons," and the first word of the weapons description is almost always "suicide" when a suicide bomber is involved. I used that fact to identify casualties due to suicide bombers. If you don't know who the suicide bombers of Iraq are, then you don't much about this conflict (and you should not have strong opinions about the war). The suicide bombers are almost all foreigners that al Qaeda brings into Iraq (mostly through Syria) to indiscriminately slaughter Shiite civilians in an effort to incite civil war (read more about them here). They are not participants in that civil war, contrary to what clueless reporters would have you believe when they preposterously refer to these wretched terrorists as "insurgents."

As you can see from this chart, the suicide bombing campaign reached a peak in August, just before General Petraeus testified before Congress. It was a desperate ploy, and I say so because the victims were among the widely despised Yazidis. Killing 500 Yazidis did nothing to advance al Qaeda's goal of goading the Shiite militias back into the fight. All it did was provide fodder for the anti-Petraeus elements in America. They needed those casualties in order to have any hope of convincing Americans that the troop surge was a failure. But it did not work. And I know what this chart is going to look like when IBC updates its database to include results from September (because ICCC has recorded all known suicide bombings for that month already). It is going to look something like this:

Hit the link to view the astounding charts. I'm very much encouraged by this news.

Finally, we've been killing off a lot of the top leaders of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Some of our recent kills are shedding light on who, exactly, is leading the group.

In a press conference today, Major General Kevin Bergner, the spokesman for Multinational Forces Iraq, provided further evidence of al Qaeda in Iraq's foreign influence. Bergner highlighted the killing "Muthanna," al Qaeda's the emir of the Iraq/Syrian border. "During this operation, we also captured multiple documents and electronic files that provided insight into al Qaeda's foreign terrorist operations, not only in Iraq but throughout the region," Bergner said. "They detail the larger al-Qaeda effort to organize, coordinate, and transport foreign terrorists into Iraq and other places."

"Muthanna was the emir of Iraq and Syrian border area and he was a key facility of the movement of foreign terrorists once they crossed into Iraq from Syria," Bergner said. "He worked closely with Syrian-based al Qaeda foreign terrorist facilitators."

Bergner said several documents were found in Muthanna's custody, including a list of 500 al Qaeda fighters from "a range of foreign countries that included Libya, Morocco, Syria, Algeria, Oman, Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, France and the United Kingdom."

Muthanna's capture in early September is but one of 29 al Qaeda high value targets killed or detained by Task Force 88, Multinational Forces Iraq's hunter-killer teams assigned to target senior al Qaeda leaders and operatives. Five al Qaeda operatives have been killed and 24 captured. * 5 Emirs at the city level or higher in the AQI leadership structure. * 9 geographical or functional cell leaders. * 11 facilitators who supported foreign terrorist and weapons movements.

Four of the senior al Qaeda leaders killed during the month of September include: * Abu Usama al Tunisi: The Tunisian born leader who is believed to be the successor to Abu Ayyub al Masri. * Yaqub al Masri: The Egyptian-born leader who was in the inner circle with Zarqawi and then also in the inner circle of Abu Ayyub al Masri. He was a close associate of Ayman al Zawahiri. * Muhammad al Afari: The Emir of Sinjar, who led the barbaric bombings of the Yazidis in northern Iraq. * Abu Taghrid: The Emir of the Rusafa car bomb network.

Have no doubt about it, we are making progress.

The Republican party thought it had the perfect issue to both rev up the base and angry blue collar Democrats -- attack immigration. After all, the Republican base supposedly hates the idea of people breaking the law and entering America without Uncle Sam's express written permission. And blue collar Democrats hate the idea of someone "stealing" their job by accepting lower wages.

All the Republicans needed to do was push for an "enforcement only" immigration bill. Refuse to do anything about our mess of immigration laws until the border had been locked down tight. "No changes without fences!" was their rallying cry. Republicans like John Kyle and John McCain, who tried to push for a comprehensive bill, were demonized and ostracized.

The strategy failed miserably. Instead of turning out the vote for the GOP, it destroyed whatever inroads the GOP had previously made with Latino voters. Richard Nadler, of America's Majority, recently completed an in-depth study of how the Republicans' position on immigration affected Latino voters. The results aren't pretty.

Nadler wrote about his results in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal.

Undocumented Latinos constitute 3.8% of the American work force. But these 5.6 million workers are a mere fraction of the 17.3 million Latino citizens 18 years or older. Of these, 4.4 million are themselves foreign born.

In my recent study for the Americas Majority Foundation entitled "Border Wars: The Impact of Immigration on the Latino Vote," I document not what Hispanics opined, but how they actually voted, given a clear choice between advocates of "enforcement first" and comprehensive immigration reform. The results, based on returns from 145 heavily Hispanic precincts and over 100,000 tabulated votes, indicate this: Immigration policies that induce mass fear among illegal residents will induce mass anger among the legal residents who share their heritage.

In these three races, Republicans' vote share in heavily Latino precincts dropped 22 percentage points.

What does this mean nationwide? Republicans' presidential Hispanic vote share increased to 40% in 2004 from 21% in 1996. In 2004, Latinos comprised 6% of the electorate, but 8.1% of the voter-qualified citizenry. With the partisan margin shrinking, the incentive for major Hispanic registration efforts by either party was scant.

That changed in 2006, when the GOP's Hispanic vote share declined by 10%. And, as we have seen, the drop was twice as precipitous where Republicans disavowed comprehensive immigration reform. With the huge wedge in vote share that "enforcement-only" opened, the cost-effectiveness of voter-registration efforts improved dramatically -- for Democrats.

Great work guys. Can we finally put to rest the idea that slamming shut the border and demonizing entire racial groups is a good way to win elections? Can we finally start working on a way to fix the entire immigration process rather than pretending that a border fence is the only thing missing?

Eduardo Gonzalez is a petty officer second class, in the U.S. Navy. He's a naturalized citizen. His wife, Mildred, is not. Eduardo is about to be deployed to overseas. His wife may not be in the States, by the time he gets back.

In Gonzalez's case, his wife, Mildred, came to the United States with her mother in 1989 when she was 5 years old. They were granted political asylum because of their status as war refugees from Guatemala.

In September 2000, Mildred's mother applied for legalization and included her daughter in that application. Her mother was granted legal status in July 2004, according to Gonzalez.

However, six weeks earlier, Gonzalez and Mildred got married, canceling Mildred's ability to apply for legal status through her mother because she was no longer an unmarried daughter under the age of 21. As a result, her legal status still remains in jeopardy.

A judge in June granted her a one-year extension to remain in the United States. If her legal status does not change by June 8, 2008, she will have 60 days to voluntarily leave the country or face deportation.

Why do we still have an immigration system that's more interested in kicking Mildred out of the country than in welcoming her into the country? Why did it take four years for her mother to be legalized? Will it take another four years for her to legalized?

Eduardo is serving this country, putting his life on the line. Are we really going to reward him by kicking his wife back to Guatemala -- a country she hasn't lived in for 17 years -- and making her go through "the line" for the next 4-10 years? Do we really want to send the world a message saying "Stay Out! America for Americans Only!"

It sure looks to me like that's what we're doing. And we don't have to. All we need to do is change immigration law. The law should treat relatives of the military as though we actually value the sacrifice that the military makes. That law should provide an easy, relatively painless process to enter the country -- not the labyrinthian mess that we have now. Why is doing the right thing so hard?

Finally, comments like this are hardly helpful.

That's just fine, according to Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which lobbies for tougher laws on illegal immigration.

"What you're talking about is amnesty for illegal immigrants who have a relative in the armed forces, and that's just outrageous," he said. "What we're talking about here is letting lawbreakers get away with their actions just because they have a relative in the military. ... There's no justification for that kind of policy."

Lawbreakers? Mildred isn't a lawbreaker. She immigrated and was granted asylum because her homeland was tearing itself apart. She spent her entire life her. She wants to spend the rest of her life her. And you're calling her a lawbreaker?

Give me a break.

Over at Winds of Change, the Armed Liberal posts some reflections on patriotism. What does it mean in a post-modern world? Is it worthwhile? Is it distinguishable from mere nationalism? What does American patriotism mean, in a nation that has been formed from one ethnicity after another (and continues to be reformed and remodeled each year)?

Now I've argued on and on that we need an anticosmopolitan liberalism, one rooted firmly in the American Founding if liberalism is going to get any traction here in US politics. I've slagged and been slagged by the usual cast of Netroots characters over this issue, and I'll point out that the Netroots liberalism for all the sound and fury hasn't signified much in the political scene except to - almost certainly - hand the nomination to the least liberal candidate running, Hillary Clinton.

The basis for much of my argument has been the work of John Schaar, a little-known political theorist who happened to be one of my professors. Who I admit I should have paid more attention to back then.

The work I keep pointing to is his work, 'The Case for Patriotism' (excerpted here).

Abraham Lincoln, the supreme authority on this subject, thought there was a patriotism unique to America. Americans, a motley gathering of various races and cultures, were bonded together not by blood or religion, not by tradition or territory, not by the calls and traditions of a city, but by a political idea. We are a nation formed by a covenant, by dedication to a set of principles, and by an exchange of promises to uphold and advance certain commitments among ourselves and throughout the world. Those principles and commitments are the core of American identity, the soul of the body politic. They make the American nation unique, and uniquely valuable among and to the other nations. But the other side of this conception contains a warning very like the warnings spoken by the prophets to Israel: if we fail in our promises to each other, and lose the principles of the covenant, then we lose everything, for they are we." [emphasis added]

This sounds right to me. It's the idea I struggled to articulate last summer, in my posts about immigration.

This, then, is the challenge for America. How do we change -- culturally, demographically, and ethnically -- while still retaining that political idea, that commitment to a set of principles that make America, America?

Furthermore, what, exactly, are those principles? What is that idea? What set of principles are we committed to? For that, I think we need to go back to principles set out in the Declaration of Independence and the framework established in the Constitution of the United States.

More on that, in the future.

The Progress magazine has a good summary of the situation in Iraq. The article is a little long, but it is well worth reading. Since it's too long -- and too complex -- for me to summarize, I'll just quote from their concluding paragraphs.

Understanding this expensive victory is a matter of understanding the remaining violence. Now that Iraq's big questions have been resolved--break-up? No. Shia victory? Yes. Will violence make the Americans go home? No. Do Iraqis like voting? Yes. Do they like Iraq? Yes -- Iraq's violence has largely become local and criminal. The biggest fact about Iraq today is that the violence, while tragic, has ceased being political, and is therefore no longer nearly as important as it was.

The argument of this article -- that with nothing more to resolve from political violence, Iraqis can now settle down to gorge themselves at the oil trough -- is based on two premises: Sunni acknowledgement of the failure of their insurgency and the need to reach an accommodation with the new Iraq, and a conjunction of interests between the coalition on one hand and the Kurds and Shias on the other.

We have become very familiar with General Petraeus and the disputed numbers of his surge. Does US strategy reflect the phenomena I have described? The Americans have never argued this way. But reading between the lines, American thinking does seem broadly to accord with the conclusions of this argument, if not its premises. Petraeus has already announced the first marine and army drawdowns for September and December respectively. His boss, defence secretary Robert Gates, is hoping publicly for a net withdrawal of 60,000 troops next year. Bush too is promising cuts. These plans are a recognition that the job in Iraq is moving rapidly towards something closer to Iraqi police work than American war.

To get to that point, the article discusses the sources of Iraqi violence, the status of the political situation, the role of al-Sadr in promoting peace (seriously!), the Sunni's desparate efforts to retain control after Saddam was killed, and the Shia's patience in not wiping out all of the Sunni's long ago.

So, really, go read it.

J. Peter Mulhern, at The American Thinker, is pretty convinced that we'll be talking about President Fred Thompson in a little over a year.

Conventional wisdom is hardening around the proposition that Fred Dalton Thompson is too lazy, ill-prepared, tired, old, lackluster, inexperienced, inconsistent and bald to make a successful run for President.

Of course, conventional wisdom rarely gets anything right. When it does, it's only by accident.

In this case conventional wisdom is not just wrong but comically so. Thompson will win the Republican nomination for two reasons. First, he's a very impressive candidate. Second, there's no realistic alternative. He will win the general election for the same two reasons.

He next runs down a list of reasons why all of the other Republican and Democrat candidates are unrealistic alternatives (Romney has the instincts of a used-car salesman, Giuliani is too far from the base, McCain and the base hate each other, etc). Then, he starts talking about what makes Fred a good candidate.

We have gotten so used to speaking of the President of the United States "running the country" that most of us no longer notice how unrealistic and unAmerican that expression is. The whole point of the American Revolution was to establish a country without anyone to run it. We don't want or need a president who is inclined to run things. We need a President who leads and inspires. Fred, with his non-managerial background, is the only candidate of either party who seems to get this.

Consider that Fred's calm, sensible demeanor permits him to say things that would terrify many ordinary voters coming from someone who seemed less steady. Thompson can say radical things and nobody turns a hair. If any other candidate talked about overhauling social security and the tax code while we fight a global war of which Iraq and Afghanistan are mere outcroppings, a substantial part of the electorate would faint dead away. Try to wrap your mind around the reality that coming off like an old coot having a conversation as he whittles next to the pot-bellied stove down at the country store is an excellent way to attract most American voters.

Frankly, that appeals to me. And that aspect of his personality comes through very clearly in some of his recent campaign videos. He's unassuming and laid back. But he possesses a razor sharp wit and a quick mind.

I need to know more than I do about Fred's positions on various issues. But he's impressed me with what I've seen so far.

Adam recommends that the religious conservatives split off and form their own party. He thinks that such a third-party might actually be able to attract -- and keep -- voters. That might provide a wedge for other alternate parties to emerge and gain support.

I'm afraid he might be right. Don't get me wrong. I'd love to see legitimate competitors to the Democrats and Republicans. Unfortunately, that would take an election cycle or two to fully emerge. Until then, the only thing a new party would do is pull votes away from Republicans and towards Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Normally, that wouldn't bother me too much.

But, as The Anchoress reminds us, the next election could have big consequences.

The third-party pipe-dreamers will once again make the Clinton tag team victorious. And with a Supreme Court likely to need three quick replacements in '09, the third party folks will watch as the court becomes a permanent 5-4 liberal majority activist court -- for decades. Decades, folks. The America you think you're going to "preserve" with your third party candidate may become unrecognizable in a very short time. The Roe v Wade you think you're going to reverse with your unelectable third candidate will seem almost quaint when compared with the "compassionate" euthanasia and the "practical, community-serving, environment saving" limitations on life you'll be watching get handed down as law by an activist court determined to see the Constitution as a "living" and flexible document.

She also provides an interesting perspective on the morality of presidential candidates.

It is always interesting to me to reflect that Jesus always went to the sinners to get his work done, to spread his message. He didn't go to the "pure" ones who thought they already knew everything they needed to know, and who would never dare to taint themselves by dealing with the lesser among them. He went to the guys who screwed up, made mistakes and understood that they were not worthy, who knew that they didn't know everything. The guys who would continue to make mistakes but who would grow and would -- most importantly -- never give up.

And all of this will come about because the only person seemingly capable of beating the Clinton's wasn't a good enough Christian for the Christian right. I think it's a mistake, folks. Create a third party in order to give yourselves a "good Christian" to vote for -- one who doesn't offend any of your principals -- and you lose. And life loses, too.

I want to support the "perfect" candidate. But right now, I'll take a candidate who merely promises to appoint originalist justices to the Supreme Court.