Hey, it worked for torture.

Uninsured? No you're not! You lucky dog, you. John McCain and his healthcare policy advisor have you more than covered:

...John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

"So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."

You just can't invent this shit. I know--I've tried. But somehow, reality is always worse than my most fevered imaginings. Thankfully, if those fevers get too hectic, I know I'm covered. There's an emergency room right around the corner.

So. If you're concerned about the rising cost of healthcare, and are worried that you and your children might one day be without it...don't worry, silly! Just go to the emergency room. Alll better, thanks to Poppy McCain.

For those of you following along in your books, this is the point at which you say, "Aha! I know this will work. Because when they wanted to torture people and make it ok, they just redefined what torture is! That made the problem go away. So it's all good!"

Lucky (or not) for McCain that he was tortured when it was still torture. Under today's regime, he was simply in for some "aggressive questioning techniques." It's a lot harder to deflect difficult campaign questions by reminding people that you were "aggressively questioned for five years."

And no, I'm not denigrating his service. I'm denigrating the way he uses that service as a shield to all criticisms--including his inability to remember how many houses he has. No shit:

Making light of McCain's inability to put a number on his real estate holdings last week, Leno joked with the Republican nominee that, "for one million dollars, how many houses do you have?"

Rather than reply with either a real answer or a similarly light-hearted joke, McCain brought up his POW status.

"Could I just mention to you Jay, that in a moment of seriousness, I spent five and a half years in a prison cell, I didn't have a house, I didn't have a kitchen table, I didn't have a table, I didn't have a chair..."

He has made his own sacrifice into a humorless punchline. Should I even bother to point out that, given an opportunity to make torture illegal, McCain refused to sign the bill?! He was against it before he was for it.

God help us.

To All Democrats:

The Bill of Rights is in tatters. Our international reputation is bankrupt. Our energy policy is a relic of the 60's. The economy is rotten.

This is the direct result of 8 years of Republican mismanagement--for 6 of which they had the place to themselves.

But just because this is true does not mean you are the default choice. You will have to take power.

Or you can plan how to explain to your kids why we invaded Iran and went to war with Russia while our roads crumbled, our bridges collapsed, our schools closed and millions of Americans went without medical care. The choice is that plain.

Something new, something wonderful.

If you didn't get a chance to watch all of Michelle Obama's speech this evening, you owe it to yourself to set some time aside and see it. I think you'll agree that, with a few different forks in the road, we could easily have watched a convention on behalf of nominee Michelle Obama.

It was an address of personal politics, expressing, perhaps better than Barack himself, the deep service-oriented roots of their political philosophy. It was fitting that she shared a stage with Teddy Kennedy, in this way: Kennedy was born wealthy and could quite easily have turned his energy toward creating even greater personal wealth. Instead he devoted his personal fortune and his political career to serving the cause of those without a voice, without wealth.

The Obamas each came from modest means and each secured a ticket to the big leagues. A law degree from Harvard is a license to earn. But both Obamas have, with that opportunity, also willingly accepted an obligation to serve.

More even than that, however, this was a watershed moment for our nation. If we are lucky, we may be blessed one day to realize just how significant it was. A black woman stood before half of political America and told them in no uncertain terms of her humanity, her intelligence and her love for a black man who they should by now be compelled to elect as leader of the free world.

I'm very, very glad that I was able to see that.

Video below in two parts; runs just over 18 minutes total.

Song of the Day

Biden!

Great choice. I refer my reader(s) to Al Giordano:

[A]s the national media vetting process will disclose in the coming days, after 36 years in the US Senate, he's still one of the poorest US Senators: he never availed himself of the back-door personal enrichment techniques that most of his colleagues - Democrat and Republican - have utilized. Beyond class resentment, he retains a sense of class solidarity. His wife since 1977 never went into Washington lobbying: she remained a public schoolteacher.

Biden has also lived personal tragedies that would have splat most people like watermelons tossed from the sixth floor of a Wilmington tenement: between his first US Senate election in 1972 and being sworn in, his first wife and three small children were in a gruesome car accident. Mrs. Biden and his daughter died, his two boys were wounded, and he became a single father. Biden never quite entered the Washington DC culture so seductive to his peers: commuting from Delaware to DC, always coming home at night.

...Yes, I would have preferred the "three point shot" - that Obama pick a running mate from outside of Washington - but as DC insiders go, it's interesting that Biden chose all these years to refuse to live inside it, or meet with its lobbyists.

Obama stopped at the three point line, passed the ball to the new muscle man with the sharp elbows, and put two points on the board instead. I can live with that. And my working class soul is actually looking forward to the populist campaign that will come out of the unlikely alliance of two guys from humble beginnings against the owners of this coal mine called America.

I love Al's coal-mine analogy; love Biden's populist roots. It's a tough sell in Delaware (home of more Banks, Insurance Companies and Corporate headquarters than any state in the nation), but he's made it work since 1977.

He's smart, he's experienced, and he's not afraid to lay the smack-down. I would take a slightly different cut at the basketball analogy to add that Biden is a three point play: three the hard way. He can draw the foul, then make them pay.

And I'm also left with this: who do the Republics answer with? Biden has them beat in foreign policy and domestically. He has them beat on moral grounds and with gravitas. I don't see a guy on the other side of the aisle who is a fail-safe response. It's going to be interesting to see how this all plays out.

Go ahead and read Al's whole take: Second Chance for the Everyman. As one of his commenters said, this is a "brass knuckles" choice by Obama.

Oh, and this made me laugh:

Biden has a reputation for shooting from the hip, as he did when he called President Bush "brain-dead" while campaigning for Sen. John Kerry. Republicans were outraged by his comments, but since Biden had also called former Democratic president Clinton brain-dead, many people dismissed the GOP's criticism.

Patriots blah-blah

I've been writing a fair amount for Pats Pulpit, having become the default source for line commentary. Here's the latest:

In Like Flynn? Or Just in Chaos?

...Flynn is the latest signing in a bewildering array of free-agents old and new that the Pioli/Belichick team has brought in to shore up the front wall. Spurred by a merry-go-round of injuries all along the front five, the Patriots now enter officially desperate waters. To bring in an o-lineman this late in camp is beyond cause for concern--it's indicative of a serious issue. That issue is depth.

Click the link to read the rest.

How many houses do YOU have?

Is your answer, "I'm not sure?"

From another world.

Coupla nights ago, Lake Forest, California:

REV. WARREN: Okay, on taxes, define "rich." Everybody talks about, you know, taxing the rich but not the poor, the middle class. At what point -- give me a number. Give me a specific number. Where do you move from middle class to rich? Is it $100,000? Is it $50,000? Is it $200,000? How does anybody know if we don't know what the standards are?

SEN. MCCAIN:...I don't want to take any money from the rich. I want everybody to get rich. (Laughter.) I don't believe in class warfare or redistribution of wealth. But I can tell you, for example, there are small businessmen and women who are working 16 hours a day, seven days a week, that some people would classify as, quote, "rich," my friends, and want to raise their taxes and want to raise their payroll taxes.

Let's have -- keep taxes low. Let's give every family in America a $7,000 tax credit for every child they have. Let's give them a $5,000 refundable tax credit to go out and get the health insurance of their choice. Let's not have the government take over the health care system in America. (Applause.)

So I think if you're just talking about income, how about $5 million?

Now, he hemmed and hawed about that. But it was a simple question: where's the line? And that was the only number he could come up with. No matter what you pick, you're bound to piss off some people. But if you understand what things cost, if you have a passing sense for what it takes to get by in the world, you can come up with a number. That number -- where you cross from middle-class to rich -- is a measure of abundance. Sure, some people feel more comfort is due the middle class than others. Certainly, if you're on the bottom of the middle class most of what's above you looks rich enough. And McCain may have shot high on purpose, giving himself a chance to look like a kidder.

But even that underlines the essential flaw here: He really doesn't know where the line is. He doesn't even have a framework for talking about it. He flies on a private jet, owns eight homes and wears $500 shoes. That's more money than most people make in a week and he wears it on his feet. Those pictures of him looking clueless in a supermarket aren't the result of a bad day--he really is clueless about the average American.


The Obama's are rich (though by McCain's line, they're comfortably middle class). But at least they recognize that. And they've devoted their careers to helping ordinary folks. And they recognize that in order to help the common person, you have to understand the common person. McCain, though he wants you to believe he has your best interests at heart, has no idea what your interests are.

In response to that blind-spot, he's essentially adopted Bush's approach to policy discussions. But instead of saying "911 911 911 911," he says, "POW POW POW POW POW."

Which answers exactly nothing. But it has the effect of halting the conversation. That's something he does understand.

Click for big picture:

People Used to Ask Me Why

I think this picture answers part of the question.

A Flash in the Pool: See Phelps, Don't Blink

ESPN's Jim Caple has a celebratory piece up on Michael Phelps' unprecedented 8 gold medals.

I was 10 years old the summer Spitz won seven gold medals at the 1972 Munich Games, and I still vividly remember getting the news of his latest races in Munich. For 36 years, those seven golds loomed as one of the few true magic numbers in sports, like Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak, Ted Williams' .406 batting average and Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game. Spitz's mark was so special that a little part of me wanted Michael Phelps to fail in his quest to surpass him. But I soon was swept up pulling for Phelps to break the record just as everyone else was.

And Sunday he did, replacing Spitz's seven on sports' ever-changing ledger with an eight that will mean as much to current kids as Spitz's number meant to me.

I think Caple's wrong about Phelps' feat having the same impact on kids today as Spitz's 7 did. When Spitz won 7, I was in the womb. The sports world Jim Caple inhabited at the time, and the one that I grew up in, was measurably different from today's.

For sports entertainment, you were lucky if you got a couple of network broadcasts a week. After that, it was radio for your favorite MLB team and college, whatever your Dad took you to see of the local high school kids, the papers and, if you were really dedicated, Sports Illustrated or The Sporting News in your mailbox.

Today, there's a fire hose of coverage. Phelps' amazing achievement will be like a dazzling flash shining briefly out of the torrent--bright in the eye for a moment, then turned under by the tide and forgotten until the next Olympiad. Caple provides the proof of it in his own story, by comparing this moment to the saga of the New Jersey Favres:

Sports is filled with hyperbole, but rarely does the moment live up to the hype. (Jets fans will know what I mean by the first week of October.) This did.

That's the flood. Unless Phelps does something horribly wrong or is revealed as a doper, his time to shine is almost at an end already. And even a negative event like an investigation will prolong it only a few weeks--and ensure it doesn't re-ignite in London four years from now.

There's no room for imagination and anticipation to burn significance and wonder into us today. We track Phelps achievements immediately (if we're interested at all), and hold on to them about as long as a sand-castle's lifetime. Sure, a few dedicated kids will pin Phelps to their walls and dream of medals at night. But those kids are already in the pool. There's just not much room for greatness in unconventional venues to penetrate a market that's already under a flood of more profitable dreck.

I point out the New Jersey Favres story, because it's exactly what I mean. That could have been handled in three reports: Favre reinstated, Packers seek trade, Favre signed by Jets. Instead, we got the polit-bureau tea-leaves-reading version, where every time he took a shit we were subjected to a full report--and it's still going on! Even at the moment when our sporting eyes should be riveted to Beijing.

There are more TV channels than ever, but proportionately less that's worth watching. And all the Phelps's in the world aren't going to change that.

Georgia On Our Mind

With the latest news that Russia has drawn only a dotted line on its incursion into Georgian territory, I wanted to point my gentle readers toward a well-done piece on the politics of that situation and our own.

Gregory Djerejian of The Belgravia Dispatch has an excellent, pithy piece on the motions in Eastern Europe and the superficial and naive administration understanding that brought us to this pass. And which McCain would seemingly double-down on.

A good thumbnail of the situation, including reference to foreign policy heavyweights George Kennan and Henry Kissinger, is followed up by a summary of the evolution of US policy toward Georgia over the last seven years. He concludes:

If we mean to help the Georgians escape an even worse fate, we must summon up the intelligence and humility to have a dialogue with Putin, Medvedev, Sergie Lavrov, Vitaly Churkin and the rest of them based on straight talk (not of the McCain variety, and if we can somehow find a messenger of the stature and talent to deliver the message in the right way, hard these days), to wit: we screwed up overly propping this guy up and he got too big for his britches, we understand, but for the sake of going forward strategic cooperation (and don't mention Iran here, at least not as the first example)--as well as stopping further civilian loss of life--agree to work with us in good faith towards a status quo ante as much as possible, don't enter Tbilisi, and throw show-boats Sarkozy/Kouchner a bone with some possible talk of a going forward EU peacekeeping role (if non-binding, for the time being). This is roughly what we should be saying/doing now, not having the President step up to the White House mike fresh back from the sand volleyball courts of Beijing to gravely declare Russia's actions are "unacceptable in the 21st century."

A side dish to his policy recommendations is a brief explication of the McCain response as a pattern for a McCain Presidency. His take, in short? "If you think you've seen myopic and naive, well, bbbaby, you ain't seen nuthin' yet."

New Pats' Pulpit post up.

Brett Farve, Rolling Rock, Kevin Faulk and Training Camp

Pay to Play

In 1959, when deejay Phil Lind of Chicago's WAIT revealed that he had accepted $22,000 in exchange for playing a record, his life was threatened and he had to get police protection.

On June 16, 2008, John McCain flipped his flop on off-shore drilling, a prospect he once opposed.

On June 24, 2008, he received a nice, "Thanks for playing our record!" gratuity from the Hess oil family, to the tune of over $256,000:

Name	Status	Amout	Date
J. Barclay Collins	Hess Corp. Attorney	$28,500	19-Jun
John B. Hess	Hess Corp.Executive	$28,500	24-Jun
Susan K. Hess	Homemaker	$28,500	24-Jun
Norma W. Hess	Retired	$28,500	24-Jun
John J. O'Connor	Hess Corp. Executive	$28,500	24-Jun
Lawrence Ornstein	Hess Corp. Senior VP	$28,500	24-Jun
John Reilly	Hess Corp. Executive	$28,500	24-Jun
Alice Rocchio	Hess Corp. Office Manager	$28,500	24-Jun
John Scelfo	Hess Corp. Senior VP of Finance	$28,500	24-Jun
F. Borden Walker	Hess Corp. Businessman	$28,500	24-Jun

^{table from TPM}

That's a nice little thank you, if you ask me. (As a side note: Wow! That's one grateful office manager--either that or Hess pays it's office managers a little bit more than average.) As Paul Krugman notes,

A McCain campaign ad says that gas prices are high right now because “some in Washington are still saying no to drilling in America.” That’s just plain dishonest: the U.S. government’s own Energy Information Administration says that removing restrictions on offshore drilling wouldn’t lead to any additional domestic oil production until 2017, and that even at its peak the extra production would have an “insignificant” impact on oil prices.

Still, if you drill, you get paid. Considering the profits reaped by oil companies, $285,000 is an insultingly small tip.

I'd be pissed, too, John.

UPDATE: From TPM, it turns out that ol' Alice the Office Manager was joined in her largesse by her husband Pasquale, a track foreman for Amtrak. The couple rent their home in Flushing, Queens, where the median household income is $58,069. The two also maxed out their yearly single-candidate limit at $2,300 each. For those of you counting at home, that's $61,600 in campaign contributions this year alone from an office manager and a track foreman. My friends, it would seem I am in the wrong industry.

Two Things Middle Yukon

Bank Swallow colony, east of the camp on the Yukon. Bank Swallows always nest in colonies; this is a rather large one.

Bank Swallows make good bear food, when the bears can get it--note the claw-marks. Click on the images to enlarge the view. In spite of this apparent mis-match, swallows in Alaska are not sorely pressed -- in Alaska.

As with many migratory species, the Bank Swallow is listed as an endangered specie in California where it is under threat from human activities.

The colony serves as a mutual-aid society. Swallows forage from dawn 'til dusk and strive to maintain close contact with the nest and young during that time. Swallows communicate good sources of food to one another, increasing efficiency and decreasing exposure among members of the colony.

Close-up of the Aspen Leaf Miner worm. Nearly all of Alaska's quaking aspen population is affected by the Leaf miner moth. Very tiny, the larvae live off the leaves and in less than a decade have spread throughout the state. The tracks of the miner worm give whole hillsides of trees a pale, gray-green cast. Trees can survive the moth, though it does retard their growth rate. Field biologists have found that trees that -- through genetic chance -- secrete nectar near their leaves are able to fend off the worm. The nectar attracts ants; the ants eat the miner larvae.

Dendrologists and entomologists are watching this remarkable explosion in the miner population carefully. Will the leaf miner ultimately destroy the aspen population? Will ants alter their feeding patterns to seek out the miner worm rather than the proxy nectar? Will aspens adapt as a population to produce nectar more commonly, thus attracting the ants and fighting the miner worm?

Trees have remarkable adaptive capacity that we only slightly understand. During the gypsy moth infestation of southern New England early in the 1980's, oak trees fought back against the tent caterpillar -- a gestational stage of the gypsy moth -- by altering the chemistry of their leaves. While this is remarkable in itself, even more amazing was their ability to warn other trees.

I can recall those summers from my childhood. Standing in the woods on a quiet early summer day, millions of masticating caterpillars created a persistent susseration that sounded like light rain. What I couldn't hear were Oak trees under attack sending out a distress call in the form of jasmonic acid. The acid drifted out on the air from tree to tree, prompting unaffected Oaks to increase the toxicity of their own leaf chemistry in advance of the assault.ⁿ

Might not the Quaking Aspen develop a similar response? May it already? With nearly every acre of the Alaskan population affected, it is to be hoped.

n: See Reading the Forested Landscape by Tom Wessels.