An earned day of rest and celebration for teabaggers, who claimed their first political scalp today.

In a huge development in the NY-23 special election, Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava has announced that she is suspending her campaign, citing an inability to win in light of recent polls and a lack of money—leaving this race as a vote between Democrat Bill Owens and Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, and a strong message that the Republican Party can no longer nominate moderate candidates, or else face a right-wing revolt.

Think that this one taste of blood will satisfy the birthers, supremacists and Christianist extremists who fuel the teabagging movement? Wingnut, my friends, has not yet begun to peak.

Before moving on to something else, take a moment to sympathize with coalition builders like Newt and David Frum, no doubt tearing their hair out at the runaway success of Sarah Starbursts’ insurgent crusade.

Betsy, White Sands, NM.

shoutingattherain, winter home.

Email me a link to your one or two favorite pics on a photo site like Flickr (do not send the image itself please) and I will put up favorites in open threads. Send a short caption if you want one.

As much as I love the professional climatologists who write RealClimate, they rarely let the anti-science crowd bait them into the kind of high dudgeon that makes PZ Myers or Tom Levenson so much fun to read.

Part of the reason for their patient tone is that most denialists are either too limited (e.g., Inhofe) or too mercenary (TechCentralStation, George Will) to absorb any correction. Since the debate opponent won’t even acknowledge that you exist most of the time, real climate scientists usually write for interested third parties. That is what makes the response from RC to the pseudo-denialist authors of Superfreakonomics (in truth, contrarians of the vanity kind that DougJ writes about), professionals with credibility to defend, so worthwhile to read.

I have very much enjoyed and benefited from the growing collaborations between Geosciences and the Economics department here at the University of Chicago, and had hoped someday to have the pleasure of making your acquaintance. It is more in disappointment than anger that I am writing to you now.

I am addressing this to you rather than your journalist-coauthor because one has become all too accustomed to tendentious screeds from media personalities (think Glenn Beck) with a reckless disregard for the truth. However, if it has come to pass that we can’t expect the William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor (and Clark Medalist to boot) at a top-rated department of a respected university to think clearly and honestly with numbers, we are indeed in a sad way.

No more excerpts. The whole post is great so go read it.

Sort of been out of the loop for the last 24 hours. Sitting in the airport now, waiting for my plane to board.

A note from Bad Horse’s Filly:

So it’s Friday and I totally forgot to send you the link for last night’s menu. It is one of my favorite recipes, Garlic, Garlic Chicken... I forgot yesterday was Thursday until I saw on my own blog this morning that it posted.

On the board tonight:
(1) Garlic, Garlic Chicken
(2) Loaf of a good crusty Artisan bread
(3) Sliced Pepper Salad
(4) Hot Apple Cider with Ginger Snaps

Click here for recipes and shopping list.

P.S. I compounded the delay by not reading John’s forwarded email sooner. My apologies to BHF, and I hope she’s been able to dig out from the Denver area’s surprise snowfall(s) without too much pain!

Having fun with the new toy.

Some of you guys have posted first-rate pics on my photo threads, so I will turn it over to you for a while. Email me a link to your one or two favorite pics on a photo site like Flickr (do not send the image itself please) and I will put up favorites in open threads. Send a short caption if you want one.

David Broder inveighs against Harry Reid with a tone normally reserved for politicians who have had sexual relations with interns:

There is an air of desperate improvisation to Sen. Harry Reid’s scheme to pass a “public option” as part of health-care reform but at the same time provide an easy exemption for any state that objects to it. The warning flags ought to be flying for anyone who can count to three—let alone 60.

[....]

I’m not entirely convinced that the public option is as essential as liberals seem to think it is. But if they are right, I don’t see how they can justify abandoning it for an uncertain number of people who have the bad luck to live in states with conservative governors and legislatures.

If a compromise is needed to get the bill to the Senate floor, far better to try Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe’s suggestion of a trigger mechanism that would activate a public option if private insurance policies at affordable rates were not broadly available.

If I am ever so senile that I believe that insurance companies wouldn’t find a way to rig a trigger mechanism, I want my feeding tubes removed.

Update. Commenter dmsilev makes an excellent point about one of Broder’s claims.
—————————-

And there’s also this bit of history FAIL:

That issue was settled in the realm of economic policy during FDR’s second term, after enough new Supreme Court justices were seated to uphold the New Deal measures an earlier conservative majority had struck down. In the area of civil rights, Lyndon Johnson and a Democratic Congress put an end to the doctrine of states’ rights. Are we now to reopen those issues to make it easier for this generation of Democrats to short-circuit the legislative process?

From the Wikipedia article on Medicaid:

Medicaid was created on July 30, 1965, through Title XIX of the Social Security Act. Each state administers its own Medicaid program while the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) monitors the state-run programs and establishes requirements for service delivery, quality, funding, and eligibility standards.

State participation in Medicaid is voluntary; however, all states have participated since 1982 when Arizona formed its Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS) program. In some states Medicaid is subcontracted to private health insurance companies, while other states pay providers (i.e., doctors, clinics and hospitals) directly.

And there are a whole bunch of other programs (highway funding and education come to mind) which are run in a similar manner; states can opt out if they want, but then they don’t get the money.

-dms

Apparently bloggers disagree with each other. Please discuss it here.

FWIW, I side more with Andrew because Sullivan is not playing the credible commenter here. He’s being an activist. This is presently a smart move because (a) Obama instinctively avoids fights, especially on the culture side, and (b) he responds to pressure from the left. There is also extra bonus incentive©: if the activist left raises a big enough stink and acts insatiable enough, Obama’s “reasonable compromises” will end up looking like what nice people on the left wanted to see in the first place.

The first example that comes to mind is the public option. There was no eighteen dimensional yahtzee going on; Obama wanted some lesser compromise but the nutroots emboldened their representatives to make a fight out of it. The same thing happened when Obama tried nominating a torture advocate (momentarily forgot his name) for a senior advisory post.

In my experience it is an activists’ responsibility to be an insatiable pain in the ass. Destructive and stupid behavior usually backfires (ELF), but so does playing nice.

Erick the Red rides again.
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Dear XXXX:

After RedState readers sent Senator Olympia Snowe 1600 lbs. of rock salt, she got back in line with the Republicans and has again signaled her opposition to Obamacare.

We have a new target whose life we need to make very painful over the next week. Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) went home over the August recess and told his constituents he was standing up to Nancy Pelosi and opposing her budget busting health care plan.

Today, Earl Pomeroy declared he would be Nancy Pelosi’s lap dog, despite the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office declaring her plan will exceed $1.5 trillion. Oh, they put back in the death panels and abortion funding too. It doesn’t matter to Earl anymore. He is going to support Obamacare and he needs to be painfully reminded that he is betraying his constituents.

I just sent Earl Pomeroy a pile of fake dog poop, only because the post office won’t send the real stuff. He needs a real reminder of what the Democrats are serving up and that he is betraying his constituents and selling out our country.

Please join me in sending Earl this fine reminder. Click here to order.

The address is:

Office of Rep. Earl Pomeroy

3003 32nd Ave S Suite 6

Fargo, ND 58103

(701) 235-9760

Likewise, I urge you to call his Washington office at (202) 225-2611 and express your displeasure.

Remember, if we make an example of Earl Pomeroy, both the Blue Dog Democrats and wayward Republicans will think twice before selling us out on health care.

Also, please note that Amazon.com will kindly send RedState some cash, so not only are you saving America, but you are helping RedState too!

Sincerely yours,

Erick Erickson
Editor,RedState.com

This sounds like good news, even if it means that Democrats once again lost control of some important confidential data.

House ethics investigators have been scrutinizing the activities of more than 30 lawmakers and several aides in inquiries about issues including defense lobbying and corporate influence peddling, according to a confidential House ethics committee report prepared in July.

The report appears to have been inadvertently placed on a publicly accessible computer network, and it was provided to The Washington Post by a source not connected to the congressional investigations. The committee said Thursday night that the document was released by a low-level staffer.

In my opinion everyone on Capitol Hill is far too secure in their jobs. In the Army both scrutiny and punishment for a given offense partially depend on the defendant’s rank. The higher you are, the larger the book they throw at you (at least the system is meant to work that way). I would not suggest that we write a new set of penal codes for Congressional officials, but as it stands the system is structured almost the exact opposite of that populist ideal. These guys have the power, and their misbehavior impacts the nation harder than most quotidian crimes ever will, yet anything short of a Randy “Duke” Cunningham fire sale gets shrugged off as business as usual.

If it has to start with Charlie Rangel and Jack Murtha, fine. Off with their heads. Whatever it takes to put a little fear of the law in Congress’s untouchables is fine with me.

Chunky David Brooks has a piece about Joe Ratzinger’s plan to cherry-pick disaffected wingers from the Anglican church as reinforcements for the coming holy war against Islam:

There are an awful lot of Anglicans, in England and Africa alike, who would prefer a leader who takes Benedict’s approach to the Islamic challenge. Now they can have one, if they want him.

This could be the real significance of last week’s invitation. What’s being interpreted, for now, as an intra-Christian skirmish may eventually be remembered as the first step toward a united Anglican-Catholic front — not against liberalism or atheism, but against Christianity’s most enduring and impressive foe.

I have to admit that I don’t understand in what ways Islam is a foe of Christianity. I guess the idea is that there are people out there would be Christians if they weren’t Muslims? Is it some kind of a recruitment battle? And, if so, how would uniting the Anglican Church and the Catholic church help with this. I thought part of the appeal of Islam is that it is schismatic enough to present ample opportunity for intra-Islamic skirmishes. But even if I’m wrong about that, seriously, what would a united Anglican-Catholic front accomplish in this holy war that the two churches couldn’t accomplish separately?

I’ve seen other pieces criticizing Douthat’s piece for being Crusadesque, but no one seems able to explain what form this Crusade will take and why it requires coordinated action among Christian Churches. What the hell is he talking about?

Seven hours is too long to hold it.

***Update***

It seems like a while since my last photo blog, so meet the new lens. A manual-focus Sigma 50mm f2.8 1:1 macro arrived yesterday from KEH.

The compact lens fits nicely on a little E-P1, even attached with a Hong Kong Nikon-m4/3 adapter from kp_store on eBay (the adapter also works well, although it grabs the lens a little tighter than I like). All-metal construction gives the lens some heft and wonderful focus action. Although lens weight makes the camera a bit front-heavy and the light meter goes Galt whenever I put on a manual lens, sharp close-ups call for a tripod and exposure bracketing no matter what so it is not that big a deal.

Some tests will determine whether this becomes my go-to portrait lens; so far all signs point to yes.

The last time I wrote about the health care bill my post took for granted that any Public Option measure would include provisions to block private insurers from dumping sick and old clients. The reason is simple. If insurers can drop expensive clients for essentially any reason then the existence of a public option will encourage them to commit any skullduggery to keep nobody but the healthiest clients (until they get sick, of course. then they’re screwed) and leave the government to manage everyone else. Caring for the neediest would drive public plan premiums through the roof, it would force public plan managers to make all of the most unpopular decisions and it would probably force public plan managers (and not the cream-skimming private plans) to hit up Congress again and again for cash.

If a bill like that reaches the Senate floor then we might as well spike it. I am not kidding about this. Both the politics and the policy will suck hard for Democrats. A “public plan” with no dumping protection could function worse in practice than if we did nothing at all. A public plan flameout will delegitimize the Democrats and probably kill off any future support progressive health care reform.

Once again we can thank Democratic moderates for crippling a good bill (remember state aid in the stimulus?) for no reason except to put some daylight between themselves and the dirty fucking hippies. It concerns me that nobody in America seems to take policy seriously other than the Democratic left.

***Update***

My rant only makes sense insofar as the final health care bill effectively controls dumping. In the link in this post Ezra suggests that risk sharing will not be as effective as I assumed it would be. If I’m wrong then everything is fine. If I am right then we’re screwed. I guess we will wait to see the reconciled bill.

Something has to be done about this:

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton came face-to-face Friday with simmering Pakistani anger over U.S. aerial drone attacks in their country and drew back slightly from her blunt remarks suggesting Pakistani officials know where terrorists are hiding.

In a series of public appearances on the final day of a three-day visit, Clinton was pressed repeatedly by Pakistani civilians and journalists about the secret U.S. program that uses drones to launch missiles to kill terrorists.

***

During an interview with Clinton broadcast live in Pakistan with several prominent female TV anchors, before a predominantly female audience of several hundred, one member of the audience said the Predator attacks amount to ‘’executions without trial’’ for those killed.

Another asked Clinton how she would define terrorism.

‘’Is it the killing of people in drone attacks?’’ she asked. That woman then asked if Clinton considers drone attacks and bombings like the one that killed more than 100 civilians in the city of Peshawar earlier this week to both be acts of terrorism.

‘’No, I do not,’’ Clinton replied.

Well, Secretary Clinton might not think small unmanned drones firing missiles into villages is terrorism, but it is pretty damned clear a lot of people in Pakistan would disagree with that assessment.

And I’m pretty damned sure if predator drones were flying over American cities firing missiles into populated areas and killing a bunch of innocents, Secretary Clinton and everyone else in the country would pretty quickly label it terrorism. Hell, if someone mails an unnamed white powder to someone, we freak out for a couple months. Let alone blowing up dozens of people every week.

I really do not understand this attitude:

It is an odd, and we’d say regrettable, pattern of this White House that it lets itself get dragged down into fights with specific media outlets.

George W. Bush experienced acrimony with the New York Times, but for the most part, other than general frustrations of a conservative administration, complaining about a liberal media, it was no big deal.

But in addition to Fox News, now The White House is going after highly-respected and influential car site Edmunds.com.

They’re actually using The White House blog to dispute the site’s analysis of Cash-For-Clunkers (via Detroit News).

How. Dare. They! They are disputing an analysis! Don’t they know they’re supposed to just sit there and let their critics say whatever they want! The White House is supposed to be “above it all” and is never supposed to correct or address their critics! For shame!

Don’t they know they are supposed to just sit there and let people babble about death panels and how tax cuts make you go to heaven and that the real problem with Wall Street was too much regulation and that cigarettes cure cancer and so forth. How dare the White House have a position on issues?