Go see "Avatar." In IMAX.

James Cameron's new sci-fi CGI epic was pretty amazing.  I've told several people that about 80-85% of the movie is CGI, and it all looks spectacular.  From my frame of reference, in terms of the way that Avatar seems to represent something truly new in moviemaking, I would compare it to Jurassic Park.  Those dinosaurs - both the robots and the CGI ones - were like nothing I had ever seen before. Older people might compare it to Star Wars, Blade Runner, or 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The "creatures" (for lack of a better word) and the fictional planet of Pandora on which Avatar takes place are remarkable.  The plants, animals, and topographic features in Avatar all look other-worldly, and yet, at the same time, they are completely believable.  Cameron imagined a fantastical world that was vastly different from ours and then proceeded to make it feel like a world that was somehow also real.  Avatar, like all of those other groundbreaking movies, aims high, and it hits its mark.  And with Avatar, the mark is really, really high.

See it in theaters.

A 70-minute assault on "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace"

Some guy named "Mike" put together a 70-minute long, brutalizing video review of the first of the new Star Wars movies.

Part 1 of the takedown:



See the rest here.

Gay Marriage, Equal Protection, and Polygamy

Last night, I listened to a presentation on the struggle for same-sex marriage and how sweeping change would likely come, if it ever came at all.  The presenter explained that first the Defense of Marriage Act (a federal law defining marriage as between a man and a woman and exempting states from the full faith and credit clause in same-sex marriage cases) would need to either be repealed or struck down by the courts.  The justification for this would be that the Constitution does not give the federal government the power to regulate marriage and that the exemption from full faith and credit would violate the full faith and credit clause.

The presenter then went on to describe how the Supreme Court could strike down state bans on same-sex marriage by incoprorating the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.  While I am a proponent of same-sex marriage, I asked the presenter how, if the Court uses equal protection as its justification in forcing states to allow same-sex couples to marry, states could bar polygamous marriages.  I generally don't like this line of argument ("if you allow the gays to marry, soon you'll have polygamy and bestiality and on and on") and I don't think this logic would necessarily apply in cases where states are determining who can get married.  That is, if states are allowed to restrict marriage, one could argue for explanding it to same-sex couples while, for various reasons, barring multi-partner unions of the same kind.  But if the Supreme Court were to say that the "equal protection of the laws" means equal right to marry who you please (so long as they are consenting adults), I struggle to see how polygamous marriages could be exempt.

My professor stepped in at that point to point out what he thought was a key difference.  First, he referred to the fact that the "equal protection" justification has usually been applied to groups whose "differentness" is not based on any choice they made (race, gender, disability).  He reminded us that one of the key arguments for same-sex marriage opponents has been that they believe homosexuality to be a matter of choice and thus not subject to the same constitutional protections as race, gender, and disability.  Presumably, if the Court were to apply equal protection in terms of same-sex marriage, it would first have to find that homosexuality is not a choice.  And there, said the professor, would be where the line is drawn between same-sex marriage and polygamous marriages.  Same-sex attraction and love would be found to be "natural" and innate, while polygamous attraction and love would be defined as a choice, something unnatural.

That may be so, and the Court, if this were to happen, may fashion the rule in that way.  But is it true that polygamous love and attraction is unnatural or even, not beneficial?  Evolutionary biologists and psychologists would certainly argue that polyamorous relationships - and especially opposite-sex polyamorous relationships - can carry significant benefits for both men and women.  Many would also argue that same-sex polygamous relationships could be beneficial for many individuals .  Furthermore, who are the members of the Court to say what constitutes "real" love between a man and a woman, or between a man and two women, or two men and a woman, and so on?  In examining polygamous relationships, how would the Court suggest we go about determining whose love is genuine and whose love is just mere physical attraction?

As I said before, I don't actually think this should be used as a justification for banning same-sex marriage.  All I'm getting at is that if you use eaual protection to force states to allow it, how do you then turn around and say that those same protections should not apply to partnerships between more than two people?

I'd be interested in hearing what everyone thinks about this.

Hmm

"Among Americans polled, 44 percent said China was the world's leading economic power compared with 27 percent who named the United States."

Discuss. I disagree strongly. I can only hope that this poll was conducted only in some small southern town and not the entire US.

(Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34255911/ns/world_news/)

Why do conservatives and Republicans blame Obama for out-of-control spending?

At some point, I'll have more to say in answer to that question.  For now, though, this chart illustrates why I ask it in the first place:

Cato ("Individual Liberty, Free Markets & Peace") Institute's Daniel Mitchell explains:

...the 2009 fiscal year began on October 1, 2008, and the vast majority of the spending for that year was the result of Bush Administration policies. Yes, Obama did add to the waste with the so-called stimulus, the omnibus appropriation, the CHIP bill, and the cash-for-clunkers nonsense, but as the chart illustrates, these boondoggles only amounted to just a tiny percentage of the FY2009 total — about $140 billion out of a $3.5 trillion budget.

 So, why aren't we seeing pictures of George W. Bush in Hitler-stache at these "Tea Party" rallies?

In which Mike Pence lies about the Democratic reform proposal's effect on families' premiums

Marc Ambinder hi-lites an obvious case of partisan cherry-picking from our very own Representative:

Here's the latest health care reform claim, by Rep. Mike Pence:


"The CBO has confirmed what every American already knows, the Democrats' plan for a government takeover of health care will dramatically raise health care costs on working families. This latest CBO study reveals that the health care bill before the U.S. Senate will raise individual insurance premiums by up to 13 percent. That means every family that refuses the government's one-size-fits-all plan, will be forced to spend an additional $2,100 a year to keep their current health care.

Pence doesn't say, but here's where he gets the figure:

Average premiums per policy in the nongroup market in 2016 would be roughly $5,800 for single policies and $15,200 for family policies under the proposal, compared with roughly $5,500 for single policies and $13,100 for family policies under current law.

Fairly clear, right?  Only if you're suddenly blinded.

The very next sentence in the CBO report is: "Those figures indicate what enrollees would pay, on average, not accounting for the new federal subsidies. The majority of nongroup enrollees (about 57 percent) would receive subsidies via the new insurance exchanges, and those subsidies, on average, would cover nearly two-thirds of the total premium, CBO and JCT."'

For those receiving subsidies -- the people who Pence's statement is targeting because they're the most vulnerable -- the CBO says that "...the amount that subsidized enrollees would pay for nongroup coverage would be roughly 56 percent to 59 percent lower, on average, than the nongroup premiums charged under current law."

Just to re-hash: Pence claimed that the CBO said that the Democratic plan would raise premiums by 13 percent.  In the real world, the CBO said that the Democratic plan would reduce premium costs by somewhere between 50 and 60 percent.  

Opposing liberal policies for legitimate reasons is one thing; lying outright about said policies is another.  Is this the best we can do?

Mike Pence is very concerned about rising health insurance costs...so what has he done about it?

I had the opportunity two weeks ago to attend a panel discussion on health insurance reform.  Representative Mike Pence was one of the panelists.  His opening comments intrigued me, as they included a number of interesting assertions.

First, Pence said unequivocally that the current system was flawed and not working for consumers.  Second, he said that he believed rising health insurance costs constitute a "crisis" and offered an impossible-to-substantiate claim that in 2005 he had urged President Bush to take on health insurance rather than Social Security.  Finally, Pence claimed that this was an issue he had been working very hard on ever since he was elected 9 years ago. 

All of that was news to me.  I went home from the panel and began researching Pence's legislative history on health insurance reform.  I found that he had voted to cap medical malpractice damages (2003-2004 session) and had twice introduced bills that would create small business associations that could purchase insurance across state lines (2003-2004 session, and 2005-2006 session).  Neither of the small business association bills even made it out of committee, and at both times you had a Republican-controlled Congress (which means that not even the Republicans think these were good bills).  Of course, this may be because there are significant problems with this type of "plan" for making health insurance more affordable. 

I e-mailed Mr. Pence's office to ask what else he had done to address this crisis and why he thought his own party had failed to do anything meaningful to solve the problem of skyrocketing health care and insurance costs when they were in power.  That was about three weeks ago.  I am yet to hear back from them, even though they promise a response in "ten business days."  I'll let you know when we're finally able to get in touch.

P.S.  For those of you who are curious about what your legislator(s) do while they are in Congress, this website can be very helpful.

A military surge provides space for - but no guarantee - of political reconciliation

From the NYT:

As the Obama administration prepares to unveil a new set of “benchmarks” to measure political progress in Afghanistan — and to prod President Hamid Karzai to improve governance there as he anticipates more troops from America — Iraq’s experience can serve as a cautionary tale.

Much of what has stalled the election law stems from the failure to achieve the same sort of benchmarks, which Congress imposed when President Bush ordered a “surge” of American forces here in 2007 to stanch an incipient civil war.

Adopting legislation to knit the country together; reforming the Constitution; strengthening independent security forces; reconciling Iraq’s Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds — all were benchmarks, and all remain partly or wholly unmet, despite the security gains that were supposed to create the space for political progress and thus peace.

Local post: Muncie Action Plan meetings

If you're in Muncie and want to be involved in the process, here are the meeting place and times for the Muncie Action Plan community meetings:

December 1st – Ball Memorial Hospital Auditorium, 2401 W. University Avenue – 5:30 PM to 7:30PM
December 2nd – Southside High School Cafeteria, 1601 E. 26th Street – 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM
December 2nd – Muncie Area Career Center President's Room , 2500 N. Elgin Street – 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM
December 3rd – Forest Park Senior Center, 2517 W. 8th Street – 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM
December 3rd – Northside Middle School Cafeteria, 2400 W. Bethel Avenue – 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM

Here's the website.

A thought for the holidays

I know a number of individuals and families who already do this sort of thing. It's a good idea:

...this holiday season we will spend excessive amounts of money on trivial and momentary entertainment. Instead, we could make contributions to local organizations that make long-term investments in our communities.

Want to do something important? Cut your spending on gifts for the family and give a generous check to your local adult literacy program. Write a check to a conservation group, like the Sycamore Land Trust. Donate to your local public library or school foundation. These groups will keep your money working for years to benefit many, not for just several hours to benefit a few.

Brule's Rules

Worth your while:



h/t: John C.

Evan Bayh: You have to pay for everything, except wars, which are awesome.

Glenn Greenwald, who is occasionally prone to hyperbole, lays into Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) over Bayh's proclamation that he is a deficit hawk, even though he thinks wars should be started without any thought to funding them:

Bayh wants to send other people into every proposed war he can find and keep them there forever ever without ever bearing any of the costs himself -- not in military service for him or his family nor even in higher taxes to pay for his glorious wars. Sacrifice is for everyone other than Evan Bayh and his friends. He runs around praising himself as a "deficit hawk" while recklessly supporting wars and indefinite occupations that the country can't afford and which drive us further into debt. He feigns concern over the "deficit" only when it comes time to deny ordinary Americans benefits which he and his family already possess in abundance.

Much of this comes from Bayh's appearance on Fox News Sunday, which included this exchange with host Chris Wallace:

WALLACE: Senator Bayh, you brought up the question of cost, and the administration has put the cost -- and this is kind of astonishing to, I think, a lot of people -- $1 million per soldier per year, so if you sent 30,000 soldiers, that would be a $30 billion price tag.

Now, some top Democrats are talking about the idea -- the new idea of a war tax to pay for the escalation in Afghanistan. Good idea?

BAYH: No, I don't think it's a good idea, not at this point, Chris. First of all, you need to provide for the nation's security regardless of your financial situation, and there's no bigger deficit hawk in Congress than I am.

I think we need to start coming to grips with this. We're going to have a big vote coming up on the debt ceiling. I don't think we should vote to raise the debt ceiling until we have a strategy in place to get our deficits down.

So we've got to take the fiscal situation seriously, but, number one, national security comes first.

Number two, we've got to look at cutting spending in other parts of the budget before we even talk about raising taxes.

If these wars were not wars of choice (and, in fact, all wars involve some degree of choice about how resources are allocated and utilized), it would be easier to argue that the cost is not something we can worry about at the moment; but seeing as Iraq turned out to be the textbook case of a war of choice and Afghanistan has increasingly looked like one, it's hard to argue that we simply must fight these fights without any concern over the cost in blood and treasure.

On Football Power Rankings

As a follow-up to C's football-related post, here is a quick complaint about sports journalism:

Every week I kill time by reading NFL "Power Rankings" on various sports websites. I'm sure you are all familiar with what these are.

For the last few weeks, the Colts have squeaked through with wins while the Vikings look dominant. The Colts are 10-0, the Vikings 9-1. Every power ranking I have looked at has the Colts #2 and the Vikings lower.

My complaint is this: the accompanying comment for the Colts is always something like, "That was a subpar performance; they have a lot of problems to fix or else they won't be undefeated much longer."

The accompanying comment for the Vikings is something like, "These guys are unstoppable. Another outstanding all-around performance. Nobody's playing better right now."

THE VIKINGS SHOULD BE RANKED ABOVE THE COLTS IN THESE POWER RANKINGS, IF THAT'S HOW THEY FEEL. THAT IS WHY THEY ARE POWER RANKINGS AND NOT STANDINGS. EVERY SPORTS JOURNALIST SORTS THE TEAMS BY RECORD FIRST FOR 90+% OF THEIR POWER RANKINGS. THIS IS NOT HOW THEY SHOULD WORK. I WOULD LOOK AT THE STANDINGS IF I WANTED TO KNOW WHICH TEAMS HAD GOOD RECORDS.

That's all.

Dallas Clark is a really good football player

Re: Taxing health insurance benefits to pay for reform

In comments, B wonders whether or not President Obama will end up supporting a tax on health insurance as part of the Senate health care bill, primarily because Obama lambasted McCain's health care plan during the campaign for including pretty much the same tax.  As I've said before, there are significant differences in the overall packages and what they'll do for working- and middle-class families and, as they say, therein lies the rub.  From October of 2008, Harvard University's Jeff Liebman on the effect of McCain's plan to tax health insurance:

Here's how the McCain plan works. Every family receives a refundable tax credit of $5000 that can be used only to purchase health insurance. Individuals receive $2500. McCain's advisers say the cost of this tax credit is $3.6 trillion dollars over ten years. They also say that their plan is revenue neutral because they introduce a new tax on employer-based health insurance that the Joint Committee on Taxation scores as raising $3.6 trillion over 10 years.

Currently, employee compensation in the form of employer-provided health insurance is exempt from both the personal income tax and FICA payroll taxes. Most employee payments for employer-based health insurance are also tax preferred. McCain's plan would eliminate these and other health-related tax expenditures.

The fact that the plan is revenue neutral means that the tax savings for families receiving tax cuts are exactly balanced by the tax increases for families whose taxes go up. But because the tax cuts are front loaded, after just a few years most American families will see their tax bills go up under the McCain plan.

What does this mean for a typical family? In 2009 the average premium for a family health insurance policy will cost about $13,600. With McCain's new tax on employer-provided health benefits, families in the 25 percent federal income tax bracket (which starts at taxable income of $65,100) will pay additional income tax of $3400, additional payroll tax of $1040, and will have their earnings cut by $1040 as their employers pass on the increase in the employer portion of the FICA tax. So the total tax on health insurance will be $5480, $480 more than the value of the new health insurance tax credit.

Because the McCain tax credit would be indexed only to inflation while the cost of health insurance has been rising at around 7 percent a year, the net tax increase will rise rapidly over time. By 2012 this typical family would receive a tax credit from the McCain plan of about $5337. But with premiums rising in that year to over $16,600, the new McCain health insurance tax would reach $6699 - for a net tax increase of $1362. By 2016, the tax credit would be $5823, while the new tax would be $8782 - a net tax increase of almost $3000.

Families in lower tax brackets will initially receive a tax cut from the McCain plan, but after a few years, they too will pay higher taxes. And millions of families with better than average health insurance plans or living in states with higher than average health care costs will see their taxes go up under the McCain plan by substantially more than is illustrated in the example above. In effect, the McCain plan punishes families with good health care by raising their taxes the most.

Lady GaGa and Christopher Walken do "Poker Face"

h/t: The Daily Dish.

KSM in NYC: What do you think?

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, known as one of (if not the) chief planner of the 9/11 attacks, will be tried in federal court in New York City. The right is incensed. William Kristol published an e-mail from a sister of one of the victims:

Today Attorney General Eric Holder will announce that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and several of his fellow 9/11 co-conspirators will be brought to New York City and tried in federal court. No doubt the Attorney General will invoke the phrase, "Swift and certain justice." This is a sham. There will be nothing swift and nothing certain about it.

The trial will be a travesty. The prosecutors at the Southern and Eastern Districts fought over these career-making cases like vultures at a kill. But who will be the vulture? In open court, it will be Khalid Shiek Mohammed who will hold forth, mocking his victims, exulting in the suffering of their families, ridiculing the judge, his lawyers and the American justice system, and worst of all, rallying his jihadi brothers to kill more Americans as the men and women of the US military risk their lives in the mountains of Afghanistan and the sands of Iraq. All, just blocks from where 20,000 body parts were dug out of the rubble of the Twin Towers.

Remember KSM's famous opening line when he was grabbed in Rawalpindi? "I'll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer." Thanks to the Obama admnistration, it looks like he’ll get his wish. And he’ll do his best—with the help of this top-drawer lawyers and much of the media—to make the real defendants at the trial the CIA interrogators—and the American government.

How will this help achieve what our president claims he wants to achieve--"restoring respect for America"? Is that what he really wants?

I am of the opinion that this particular court setting is most appropriate.  After all, New York was far and away the community most affected by these attacks.  Also, I'm not particularly worried about what KSM will reveal about the CIA interrogators that has not already come out (we know pretty much all there is to know about how he and others were treated during their detainment).  And of course the interrogations did not concern the investigation into whether, in fact, KSM helped with 9/11, but with ongoing security concerns regarding future terrorist attacks.  I doubt that the prosecutors will rely very heavily - if at all - on evidence obtained during KSM's detention, primarily because they won't have to. 

Anyways, I gotta run.  Particularly for any lawyers out there, what do you think of all this?

Cost-control: House vs. Senate

The House bill has been taking some criticism lately because it expands coverage without doing very much to cut costs. Ezra Klein explains the ways in which the Senate Finance Committee's bill compensates for that weakness:

The Senate Finance Committee's bill, which will be quite close to the merged Senate bill, allows you to tell three credible stories on cost control that the House bill simply doesn't.

The first comes from the excise tax on high-cost health insurance plans. The idea here is simple enough: you're taxing any growth in health-care premiums that's faster than the rate of growth in GDP plus one percentage point, which is going to make people a lot less accepting of premium increases and unchecked growth. This is, in the simplest sense of the term, a cost control. In theory, it controls costs by taxing one of the drivers of cost growth into submission. It is, by far, the policy economists are most united on, and the one that works in the most straightforward and blunt way.

The second comes from the newly formed Medicare Commission, which is a lot stronger than people realize. The idea isn't simply that a panel of experts gets to dream up interesting reforms to try out in Medicare. It's that they are charged with making sure that Medicare hits certain growth targets, and their package of reforms has to achieve that goal. Those reforms are then sent to Congress, where Senate debate is limited to 30 hours, and amendments must be both budget neutral and "germane." This report, in other words, is exempt from the filibuster. So far as anything is ever easy to pass, this is easy to pass. If Congress cannot manage action even within this streamlined process, then it simply cannot cut health-care costs at all, and our federal government will go bankrupt.

The third is the delivery-system reforms. The House bill has these too, though they're a bit weaker. They key alchemy, however, is the interplay of the delivery-system reforms and the MedPAC commission. The Senate builds in a lot of pathways by which an idea that starts in Medicare through the commission and proves successful can be brought to pilot and then brought to scale across the health-care system. Medicare serves as the laboratory, but other institutions created in the bill serve as the factory.

All three of those stories make sense, and any of them, on their own, would represent the most significant effort at cost control in a generation, if not ever.

The 100 Greatest Quotes from the Wire

For all you fans out there (NSFW - cursing, violence, etc.):

Local post: Teacher licensing and school funding in Indiana

Indiana State Superintendent of Schools Tony Bennett recently proposed a series of changes to the ways in which teachers are educated (briefly: more subject mastery, less pedagogy) and how licenses will be granted in the state (again, briefly: make it easier to transition into teaching from another career).  Many teachers, ed. school folks, teachers-in-training do not like the reforms.  The manner in which this all unfolded was not very surprising.

The proposed changes are not as bad as many say they are, but they are also not a solution to the problems with Indiana's - and the country's - public education system.  They may attract some people from the professional world with expertise in particular areas into the teaching profession, but this kind of thing is already happening.  Nonetheless, these changes may be necessary in order to compensate for the looming teacher shortage that will come as more and more boomer-teachers retire.  It might weaken the ed. schools, which may or may not be one of the governor's goals.  It might affect teachers' unions, though there is no reason to believe that this new kind of teacher will have any less incentive to join than one who is traditionally-trained.  It won't attract a huge swath of talented and motivated people to the profession who otherwise wouldn't teach - only money would do that.  As things stand, most teachers in Indiana - even if they are the best-educated, most successful, and most experienced teachers in their districts - will not make half of what the average superintendent makes in a year. 

Following the jump, three videos that make up a segment from WFIU on the current funding formula used by the state DOE and on  Bennett's proposed changes: