oh, d.c.

Via angry asian man:

This is ridiculous: Carryout Customer Sees Robbery, But Is More Interested In His Food. In Washington D.C., Eastern Carryout, a Chinese takeout restaurant, was robbed on Saturday night. Owner Paul Chen was waiting on a customer when three men came through the back and robbed him and his family.

According to Chen, the customer out front saw all of this and walked out the front door, but didn't call the police. Instead, after the robbers were gone the customer actually returned and wanted to know where his food was. Chen gave the man back his money and told him to leave.

Yeah, that guy's not getting any good citizen awards. And he's sure as hell not getting any Chinese food. According to police, this was the sixth robbery of an Asian restaurant in the area over the last ten days. Jerk-ass people like this only make it worse.

This is in line with my own experience living in D.C., which was marked with a particularly intense lack of sympathy and general disregard for common human decency.

completing the seventeenth amendment

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) announced yesterday plans to introduce a Constitutional Amendment that will end the appointment of Senate vacancies by governors and require special elections when such openings arise. From his website, via TPM:

The controversies surrounding some of the recent gubernatorial appointments to vacant Senate seats make it painfully clear that such appointments are an anachronism that must end. In 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution gave the citizens of this country the power to finally elect their senators. They should have the same power in the case of unexpected mid term vacancies, so that the Senate is as responsive as possible to the will of the people. I plan to introduce a constitutional amendment this week to require special elections when a Senate seat is vacant, as the Constitution mandates for the House, and as my own state of Wisconsin already requires by statute. As the Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee, I will hold a hearing on this important topic soon.

Constitutional Amendments are obviously difficult and sometimes impossible to pass, which is why there are only 27 of them. And I'm not sure whether the Blagojevich debacle plus the media frenzy around the failed bid by Caroline Kennedy will be enough to garner widespread support. But Russ is right that the goal of the Seventeenth Amendment, to eliminate the sort of seat-buying for which Blago is under investigation, is incomplete until we fully democratize the Senate.

sec'y of energy chu: we're all doomed!

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu describes the "tipping point" at which humans will no longer be able to prevent global warming, at which time we will all basically melt. From what I understand. Via angry asian man.



Basically, if we can't stop global warming beyond the damage we've already done, we could basically be dooming ourselves all to climate change so dramatic that the chances of humans adapting to the new environment will be "difficult" (read: impossible).

He also talks about new energy technologies and the need for a national energy transmission system, which is less doom and gloom and more wonky/nerdy awesome.

new yorker: a distinctively american plan

The New Yorker runs a very thoughtful feature on how other countries' universal health care plans evolved, and what that might mean for folks trying to reform health care in the United States. A brief excerpt:

Every industrialized nation in the world except the United States has a national system that guarantees affordable health care for all its citizens. Nearly all have been popular and successful. But each has taken a drastically different form, and the reason has rarely been ideology. Rather, each country has built on its own history, however imperfect, unusual, and untidy.

Social scientists have a name for this pattern of evolution based on past experience. They call it “path-dependence.” In the battles between Betamax and VHS video recorders, Mac and P.C. computers, the QWERTY typewriter keyboard and alternative designs, they found that small, early events played a far more critical role in the market outcome than did the question of which design was better. [...]

So accepting the path-dependent nature of our health-care system—recognizing that we had better build on what we’ve got—doesn’t mean that we have to curtail our ambitions. The overarching goal of health-care reform is to establish a system that has three basic attributes. It should leave no one uncovered—medical debt must disappear as a cause of personal bankruptcy in America. It should no longer be an economic catastrophe for employers. And it should hold doctors, nurses, hospitals, drug and device companies, and insurers collectively responsible for making care better, safer, and less costly.

[...]

In designing this program, we’ll inevitably want to build on the institutions we already have. That precept sounds as if it would severely limit our choices. But our health-care system has been a hodgepodge for so long that we actually have experience with all kinds of systems. The truth is that American health care has been more flotilla than ship. Our veterans’ health-care system is a program of twelve hundred government-run hospitals and other medical facilities all across the country (just like Britain’s). We could open it up to other people. We could give people a chance to join Medicare, our government insurance program (much like Canada’s). Or we could provide people with coverage through the benefits program that federal workers already have, a system of private-insurance choices (like Switzerland’s).

The full article provides much more context and history, including how Great Britain, France, and Switzerland all developed their systems. It is, in a way, a well-established argument from the center-left "mainstream," who seek incremental change rather than dramatic reform. This is most powerfully demonstrated by the conclusion at the end of the article defending the (in)famous (depending on who you ask) Massachusetts program as a rousing success; depending on whether you ask "mainstream" hybrid-program or single-payer advocates, Massachusetts is the example of why a similar federal program would work or would fail, in every way that is important (what is important, again, depends on who you ask).

But what the article does bring to the table that isn't much talked about is the concept of America's current health industry not only as a complete mish-mash, but also as a rich wealth of possible designs to draw from, such that most any reform would represent a continuation of America's health care history, not a radical departure. The success and popularity of Medicare speaks well for a single-payer national health care system in the ilk of Canada; equally so does the newfound success of the Veteran's Administration speak to the ability of America to transform to a government-run, British-style managed care system; and finally, our deepest tradition of employer-based insurance suggests that a system of local or regional insurance pools in the form of Switzerland or France may work just as well. Not all will have the same results in terms of quality of care delivered, ability to address and eliminate racial/ethnic/gender/geographic disparities in health status, or monetary savings to both society as a whole or families and communities, but all are possible.

And possibility is, at the very least, a starting place.

the speech

Transcript via Future Majority:

My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land - a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America - they will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act - not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account - to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day - because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control - and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart - not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort - even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us today, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment - a moment that will define a generation - it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence - the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

happy inauguration!

Hope, 15th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, NYC, Jan. 2009



Empty Bush '04 campaign office, Concord, New Hampshire, Jan. 2004



Audacity of Hope, in Portuguese, Dec. 2007



Signs of Progress, U Street and 14th Street, Washington, D.C., Oct. 2008



The Future is Now, San Mateo, California, Thanksgiving 2008

more push back on dr. gupta

Late last week, House Judiciary Chair John Conyers joined Nobel laureate Paul Krugman in opposing the nomination of CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta for Surgeon General. As reported by HuffPo:

[T]here are highly experienced medical professionals who question whether Dr. Gupta has the necessary experience or even the medical background to be in charge of some 6,000 physicians or more who work in the United States Public Health Service. Gerard M. Farrel, Executive Director of the Commissioned Officers Association, stated in the January 7, 2008 Washington Post that Dr. Gupta will certainly face a "credibility gap" because he never served in the National Health Service Corp, and furthermore, does not have the "experience or qualifications to be the leader of the nation's public health service." Clearly, it is not in the best interests of the nation to have someone like this who lacks the requisite experience needed to oversee the federal agency that provides crucial health care assistance to some of the poorest and most underserved communities in America.

A substantive and thorough summary of those critiques by (some of those) medical professionals of the imminent nomination of Gupta, from an email by Physicians for a National Health Program:

The report this week that President-elect Obama is considering Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent, for the position of U.S. surgeon general is deeply troubling.

Among our concerns are these:

He has very little background in public health, preventive medicine or administration.

He has openly opposed progressive health reform, going so far as to cite false information to denigrate single payer (e.g. in his error-laden attack on Michael Moore's film "Sicko") and parroting the health insurance lobby's distortions of single payer.

As a media figure, he has been disturbingly cozy with Big Pharma. He co-hosts Turner Private Networks' monthly show "Accent Health," which airs in doctors' offices around the country and which serves as a major conduit for targeted ads from the drug companies. Another example: In 2003, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, he publicly downplayed concerns about the dangers of Vioxx. It was removed from the market a year later by its manufacturer, Merck.

In the 2008 election campaign, his reporting on John McCain's health proposals was misleading and implicitly positive, giving undeserved credence to McCain's claims that buying private health insurance on the open market is a financially viable option for most Americans.

We urge you to write to President-elect Obama and express your opposition to Gupta's possible nomination, and to urge Obama to nominate a more acceptable candidate for this critically important post. You can do so by clicking here: http://change.gov/page/s/healthcare.

Sincerely yours,
Quentin D. Young, M.D.
National Coordinator
Physicians for a National Health Program
www.pnhp.org | info[-at-]pnhp[-dot-]org

As HuffPo notes in the linked article above, however, it's doubtful whether there will be much if any push back from the Senate, which actually gets to do confirmations.

Paging Senator Franken?

monday morning wtf: exxon more progressive than dems on global warming?

From the Wall Street Journal, via OpenLeft and Sirota:

The chief executive of Exxon Mobil Corp. for the first time called on Congress to enact a tax on greenhouse-gas emissions in order to fight global warming...

The policy he is advocating is often called a carbon tax because it would be imposed on emissions of carbon dioxide, the most common man-made greenhouse gas. By backing it, Mr. Tillerson has become an unlikely member of a club that includes former Vice President Al Gore, consumer advocate Ralph Nader and President-elect Barack Obama's designated head of the National Economic Council, Larry Summers.

As David Sirota points out, this makes Tillerson's position on global warming more progressive than that of Congressional Democrats, who are in favor of the so-called "cap and trade" proposals that would create a market for buying and selling carbon pollution (that proposal is supported by all the other big oil companies).

bigger is better

So we have word that some Democratic Senators, such as Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, are a little less than happy with the economic stimulus plan that the President-elect's people are proposing. There's this gem from Talking Points Memo likening Obama's plans to Reaganomics:

"There's only one thing we've got to do in this stimulus, and that's create jobs," Harkin told me. "I'm a little concerned by the way Mr. Summers and others are going on this ... it still looks a little more to me like trickle-down."

[...] "What I'm hearing from Mr. Summers is that they've got a different approach -- tax breaks, and this and that," he said. Harkin warned that, much like the outcome of George Bush's $600 stimulus package last year, recipients of quick tax cuts "are going to be salting it away, not spending it."

When I asked if he felt his concerns were heard during the meeting, he looked to the floor and slowly shook his head. It was almost forlorn.

I'm guessing many progressives are also concerned about the tax cut element of the plan. If anything, the non-stop disavowal of the New Deal's creation of a tax code that required Americans to contribute their fair share to our national well-being has played right into the hands of conservatives that wish to, in the words of conservative icon Grover Norquist, make government small enough to drown it in a bathtub. Especially when we look at the state level and the quandary of states that must either cut programs or raise revenue, it is rather bizarre to find the incoming federal government want to do the exact opposite: increase spending and cut revenue. Which is not to say that the states, which are required to have balanced budgets by their own stupid laws, are correct; spending is exactly what should be done right now. But spending should be done in a way that revives the economy, not in a way that simply transfers federal revenue intended for the well-being of the nation into the pockets of those oversea manufacturers who got us into this mess in the first place.

Which brings me to this. Loathe though I am to quote TNR, the much more venerable online news outlet Talking Points Memo points us towards this thoughtful critique of President-elect Obama's economic stimulus plan. The two main, wonky points: First, Obama is not thinking nearly big enough and the plan does not address the underlying issue--the decline of American manufacturing, and; second, the initial Bretton Woods/IMF system of international monetary stability (albeit imperfect) has broken down completely and must be replaced in order to address the global nature of the current recession.

A couple of key excerpts. First, on how to make the stimulus package bigger in a productive way:

[I]n 1936, unemployment was still at 16.9 percent; by 1942, after two years of war spending, it was 4.7 percent, strongly indicating that it was war spending that did it. I am not suggesting that the United States start a world war in order to solve the world's economic problem. But I am suggesting a strategy that could be called the fiscal equivalent of war.

It would consist not merely of updating or repairing the nation's infrastructure, but in undertaking massive new investments that would expand the scope of American industry, and address other urgent problems in the process: global warming, over-reliance on petroleum, and the need to revive America's domestic manufacturing capabilities--not just to provide jobs, but also to provide tradeable goods that can reduce the country's current account deficit.

One area that is ripe for such investment--and that is not, from what I have seen, a declared priority of the Obama administration--is high-speed rail. [...] [I]nstalling high-speed rail in the Northeast corridor could cost about $32 billion, while California's high-speed rail system would require up to $40 billion. A system that would address the other areas of the country could easily raise the cost to the hundreds of billions. The House transportation and infrastructure committee has currently proposed $5 billion in stimulus funds for intercity rail--not even a down payment on what it would cost to convert the U.S. to high-speed rail.

Second, on what trade deficits and currency speculation means in the near future:

Since 1971, the breakdown of Bretton Woods has given way to a perverse anti-system that combines floating rates, fuelled by speculation, and behind-the-scenes currency manipulation by counties like China and Japan that don't want their exports priced out of foreign markets. [...] This system, which features huge surpluses in China and Japan, and huge deficits in the United States, has not proven viable, and is breaking down right now. If China is "losing [its] taste for debt from the U.S.," as a recent New York Times story reported, the U.S. will have trouble financing its deficit expenditures. Interest rates will go up, investment will go down, income will sink, and more Americans will be out of jobs; on the other side of the Pacific, China will be able to sell less goods to the U.S., its investment will fall, its workers will be jobless, and so on. It's not a pretty picture.

weekend food blog: chinese food is more american than apple pie

So claims Jennifer 8 Lee in her TED talk on the history of Chinese Food.



Interesting note, fortune cookies are Japanese, but the market for making and selling them opened up when all the Japanese Americans were imprisoned in internment camps in 1942. Good stuff in there about General Tzo of chicken infamy.

obama the food critic

Via HuffPost:

In August, 2001, President-elect Barack Obama did a turn as amateur restaurant critic for a local Chicago television show called "Check, Please!". The premise of the show was that each week three amateur reviewers were invited to pick their favorite restaurant and review it, then they would review the picks of the other two critics.

After taping an episode with a local firefighter and a retail buyer, Obama's segment was shelved...until now. The vintage clip will be aired on January 16th.

According to the Chicago Tribune:

Why the almost-eight-year delay? Both [executive producer David] Manilow and then-host Amanda Puck remember Obama's debut as a restaurant critic came at a time when the show was still being tweaked.

And the president-elect was too good--too thoughtful, too articulate, not enough of an amateur. He ended up dominating the conversation.

The HuffPost post doesn't ask an important question, however: how does this all line up with the report that Obama is a picky eater? Newsweek via Jezebel:

Most candidates gain the Campaign 10 (or 15)...Obama, by contrast, lost weight. He regularly ate the same dinner of salmon, rice and broccoli. At Schoop's Hamburgers, a diner in Portage, Ind., he munched a single french fry and ordered four hamburgers—to go. At the Copper Dome Restaurant, a pancake house in St. Paul, Minn., he ordered pancakes—to go. (An AP reporter wondered: who gets pancakes for the road?) A waiter reeled off a long list of richly topped flapjacks, but Obama went for the plain buttermilk, saying, "I'm kind of traditionalist." Reporters joked that if he ate a single bite of burger or pancake once the doors of his dark-tinted SUV closed, they'd eat their BlackBerrys.

Was then State Sen. Obama more open to these sorts of foods, or was he just on the show promoting a local business in his district that he didn't actually frequent? He certainly presents it as if he ate the food himself:

Clip 1:


Clip 2:

tv personality at surgeon general

The next Surgeon General will likely be CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Gupta is a medical doctor, a neurosurgeon who has actually performed surgery as recently as 2003, when he was imbedded with a Navy medical unit and his skills were called for five times, so that much is covered. It is, of course, immediately striking that one who's claim to administrative experience is directing his intern to fetch him a coffee with skim milk.

Just kidding; I have no idea how Dr. Gupta takes his coffee, but more importantly, it's not clear that the position is much more than a spokesperson for HHS and the Administration's public health policy. Here's what the Surgeon General does:

The Surgeon General functions under the direction of the Assistant Secretary for Health and operationally heads the 6,000-member Commissioned Corps of the [U.S. Public Health Service], a cadre of health professionals who are on call 24 hours a day, and can be dispatched by the Secretary of HHS or the Assistant Secretary for Health in the event of a public health emergency[....]

The Surgeon General also has many informal duties, such as educating the American public about health issues and advocating healthy lifestyle choices.

Yes, I saw the part about being in charge of the Public Health Service, but I'm still not convinced those professionals aren't, day-to-day, run by career staff. But maybe I could say that about all departments. Truth is, I don't really know how to feel about this pick, given all the brilliant public health professionals out there. If this is a primarily spokesperson position, however, perhaps this was the right choice. On Dr. Gupta:

The Michigan-born son of parents who were born in India, Gupta has always been drawn to health policy. He was a White House fellow in the late 1990s, writing speeches and crafting policy for Hillary Clinton. His appointment would give the administration a prominent official of South Asian descent and a skilled television spokesman.

Gupta, who hosts "House Call" on CNN, has discussed the job offer with his bosses at CBS and CNN to make sure he could be released from his contractual obligations, the sources said.

His role as journalist and physician have sometimes overlapped. During the 2003 Iraq invasion, Gupta was embedded with a Navy unit called Devil Docs and, while covering its mission, performed brain surgery five times, the first of which was on a 2-year-old Iraqi boy.

Judgment reserved, pending actually performance review.

update: The Nobel Laureate weighs in. From Paul Krugman's blog:

I don’t have a problem with Gupta’s qualifications. But I do remember his mugging of Michael Moore over Sicko. You don’t have to like Moore or his film; but Gupta specifically claimed that Moore “fudged his facts”, when the truth was that on every one of the allegedly fudged facts, Moore was actually right and CNN was wrong.

What bothered me about the incident was that it was what Digby would call Village behavior: Moore is an outsider, he’s uncouth, so he gets smeared as unreliable even though he actually got it right. It’s sort of a minor-league version of the way people who pointed out in real time that Bush was misleading us into war are to this day considered less “serious” than people who waited until it was fashionable to reach that conclusion. And appointing Gupta now, although it’s a small thing, is just another example of the lack of accountability that always seems to be the rule when you get things wrong in a socially acceptable way.

Yeah, that is annoying.

ending lawlessness as a tool against lawlessness

Pretty excited about the surprise pick by President-elect Obama of former Rep. Leon Panetta (via WaPo):

Panetta, a former member of Congress who served as chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, has most recently been the director of the Panetta Institute, a non-partisan policy center at California State University in Monterey.

He was also director of the Office of Management and Budget. I think what Obama was looking for was a solid administrator, and it looks like he found one.

Obama's defense of his pick makes sense. Basically, let's get away from the intelligence community's tarnished reputation (via dKos):



Sens. DiFi and Jay Rockefeller are all in a huff about the fact that we're not continuing the Bush legacy of the intelligence community. Crickets chirp too loudly. I'm only disappointed to hear the news that Sen. DiFi won't be running for California Governor after all, meaning that she and her increasingly out-of-touch views will continue to represent Californians in the Senate after all.

Here's a much saner Senator with a view of Panetta (from Sen. Russ Feingold's website):

I am pleased by reports of the nomination of Leon Panetta to be the next CIA Director. These reports indicate that President-elect Obama recognizes the need for fresh leadership for the intelligence community. Leon Panetta has a long and distinguished career in public service and there are few people of whom I have a higher opinion. He has been a strong voice opposing the interrogation practices authorized by the Bush Administration and he is well-equipped to restore our national security, which has been undermined by the current administration’s policies. I look forward to closely examining his record, hearing his plans for protecting our nation against al Qaeda and other threats, and learning how he will help restore the rule of law after years of lawlessness that have undermined our national security.

This is change I can believe in.

happy new year!

High Hopes for 2009:

• Major legislation and agency action in fighting global warming.
• Withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
• Health care reform that includes everyone and addresses disparities and quality of care.