TenuredVulture wrote:I don't think condoms are gonna be the issue. But I hate arguments that assume that somehow a market fairy will come a fix these things. There is no market fairy. Markets are distorted and manipulated all the time, and not just by governments. The ability of a few powerful people to manipulate markets is easier in smaller and rural areas, and this can include raising barriers to entry.

See my post above. Increased government regulations on what a pharmacy MUST serve would not necessarily improve the pharmaceutical needs of a small town. I'm sure there are some towns with a single pharmacy, marginally profitable, who does not carry every medicine known to modern man. And if he was forced to buy and stock these medicines, that could eventually cause him to retire or move somewhere with a bigger market.

I'm sorry, but opposing more government regulation here does not mean that the "free market will fix everything." It's more like, "if the government messes with what the free market is roughly willing to produce, consumers may be worse off."

Werthless wrote:You're so right that you don't care to explain what the rule would do? I'm confused. In your first post, you're talking about compelling doctors and pharmacists to do what the patient wants, and give them certain drugs. Now how do you justify this law?

why are you belaboring this? there's 1 reason for this revision: to give MDs & pharms (mostly pharms) the option not to prescribe or fill morning-after pill scripts. That's it. There's no need to pretend there's more to it than that. If the opt out thing is oked, it will affect approximately 0.000000000000000000000000273% of all morning-after scripts written in the US.

Like most of these 11th-hour actions of outbound presidents, it has nil to do with markets, and ALL to do with interest group politics (& usually, the teenier & tinier the group the better).

Here, it's Bush giving one last reacharound to a particular sect of holy (er than thou) rollers.

So the Denver Post is saying Ken Salazar may become Obama's Sec of the Interior, and the rumor is his brother, who is a Congressman, could be the next Senator. Both of those seats would become a whole lot more appealing as pickups.

Now we see the true potential of Nate Silver writing about politics: he can call out Harry Reid as "exceptionally ineffective."

There are basically two mechanisms that a majority leader can employ to limit filibusters: firstly, he can threaten to block votes on certain of the opposition party's legislation (or alternatively, present carrots to them for allowing a vote to proceed), and secondly, he can publicly shame them. Reid managed to do neither, and the Senate Republicans did fairly well for themselves considering that they were in a minority and were burdened by a President with negative political capital.

If this isn't absolutely spot-on (and maybe it isn't), I'd love to hear why.

dajafi wrote:Now we see the true potential of Nate Silver writing about politics: he can call out Harry Reid as "exceptionally ineffective."

There are basically two mechanisms that a majority leader can employ to limit filibusters: firstly, he can threaten to block votes on certain of the opposition party's legislation (or alternatively, present carrots to them for allowing a vote to proceed), and secondly, he can publicly shame them. Reid managed to do neither, and the Senate Republicans did fairly well for themselves considering that they were in a minority and were burdened by a President with negative political capital.

If this isn't absolutely spot-on (and maybe it isn't), I'd love to hear why.

I would have loved to see Hillary in that job.

jerseyhoya wrote:So the Denver Post is saying Ken Salazar may become Obama's Sec of the Interior, and the rumor is his brother, who is a Congressman, could be the next Senator. Both of those seats would become a whole lot more appealing as pickups.

Ken Salazar to Interior seems like it's going to happen. In terms of your point here, is the other Salazar less popular, or are you just saying that in general it's easier to beat appointed than elected incumbents?

Colorado in general seems to be blue-ing up nicely, though it seems plausible enough that bad economy + midterm factor could = Republicans getting back some seats, and one like Salazar's which they had recently makes sense in that scenario.

Also, I noted in the ed policy thread that Arne Duncan, the Chicago Superintendent and a pickup hoops buddy of Obama, is the pick for Secretary of Education. This is good news, I think, though it might be perpetuating the mystery of Obama's ed views--reformer or union type?--into the administration. Duncan was the one rumored possibility whom everybody seemed more or less okay with.

The other Salazar has never been elected statewide, so it'd be easier to beat him.

Obama won Colorado by about 2% more than he won nationwide, so it's about as pure of a tossup as you're going to find. Additionally, the other Salazar represents a congressional district that we should hold, so we have a very good shot at winning that in a special.

jerseyhoya wrote:The other Salazar has never been elected statewide, so it'd be easier to beat him.

Obama won Colorado by about 2% more than he won nationwide, so it's about as pure of a tossup as you're going to find. Additionally, the other Salazar represents a congressional district that we should hold, so we have a very good shot at winning that in a special.

But the Colorado Republican party is likely to nominate some batshit crazy right winger.

I thought I just read something about candidates in states like Colorado are becoming more and more moderate, on both sides

I'm not sure who we'd nominate to run statewide. If we picked Tancredo, we'd lose to whichever Salazar was running. I think the congressman who won Tancredo's seat is ambitious and is borderline sane. He might be a good choice.

I know there's a discussion/argument/civil war within the Republican party about whether the best strategy going forward is to run ideologically pure candidates or more centrist candidates, and I suspect the outcome of that debate will depend a lot on the state's Republican party. So, in Arkansas, a likely outcome is that the Republicans will nominate someone so abhorrent to challenge Blanche Lincoln that I'll have to go back on my pledge to never vote for that moron again.

But what's the likely outcome in Colorado?

[url=http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/12/thinking_about_torture.php]Ross Douthat on torture.
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I'm a bit uncomfortable with how close this is to my own early feelings about the question. On the old board, I'm pretty sure I wrote things like, "If they got KSM, I'd want to turn the screws myself." That desire to hurt the planners and perpetrators of evil is still in there somewhere, but what I think I get now is that when you open that door, you can't open it just a crack: it's almost impossible to avoid the "banality of evil" that starts with torturing someone who arguably "deserves it," and ends with violating the human rights of wrong place/wrong time victims just to push away the boredom of Lynddie England and Charles Graner.

Those of you waiting for an Obama cabinet pick that angries up activists on the left: your time has come.

Actually, Vilsack at Agriculture isn't likely to sit very well either, as it seems like a reasonable guess that the former governor of Iowa will try to keep stroking agribusiness. That would be a nice reform/good-government issue for the Republicans... if only they weren't as or more terrified of offending those interests.

dajafi wrote:Those of you waiting for an Obama cabinet pick that angries up activists on the left: your time has come.

Actually, Vilsack at Agriculture isn't likely to sit very well either, as it seems like a reasonable guess that the former governor of Iowa will try to keep stroking agribusiness. That would be a nice reform/good-government issue for the Republicans... if only they weren't as or more terrified of offending those interests.

Vilsack is kind of a hack. But the pick is seems political--Obama surely doesn't want to piss off Iowans, since lots of them voted for him. I heard Blanche Lincoln's name mentioned as a possible Sec Ag, and that would have really pissed me off.

It gets worse.

Obama really sucks at picking preachers.

Salazar looks like a total douche nozzle in that picture.

Here ya go folks, get yer free pocket constitution from The Heritage Foundation.

I gotta say, I'm impressed with Obama's choices thus far with the exception of Geithner.

Again with the Geithner bashing, it's perplexing to say the least. The Economist liked the pick.

Phan In Phlorida wrote:Here ya go folks, get yer free pocket constitution from The Heritage Foundation.

I have quite a collection of Pocket Constitutions, including I think this one. My favorite is from Cato, which is bound in this cheap faux leather cover.