• Sick: The Untold Story of America’s Health Care Crisis – and the People Who Pay the Price by Jonathan Cohn
  Case histories illustrating the complexity of insurance and health care issues
• Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer by Shannon Brownlee
  Health care and economics.
• Boomerang: Health Care Reform and the Turn Against Government by Theda Skocpol
  Analyzing the Clinton adminstration’s failed attempt to fix healthcare in 1994 offers interesting background and many instructive points relevant to today’s healthcare debate.
  Also recommended on the same topic: The System: The American Way of Politics at the Breaking Point by Haynes Johnson and David Broder.
• The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care by David Gratzer
  The case against government involvement.
• The Health Care Mess: How We Got Into It and What It Will Take to Get Out by Julius Richard and Rashi Fein
  The case for government-financed universal healthcare.

I have read none of these. Are they really the best?

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Reading up on health care

News that Sarah Palin’s political action committee has bought more than $63,000 worth of Going Rogue shows that the ex-governor knows how to manage her books. Going Rogue retails for $28.99. If the books were bought at full retail price and author got a 15 percent royalty off the retail price, that means that 15 percent of the $63,000, or $9,450, ended up in Palin’s own pocket.

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A tip for authors

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Sarah Palin

I am reading and enjoying Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. It is my misfortune, I realize, to be so sensitized to colonialist attitudes as to imagine I detect in the book a faint taint of colonialist condescension.

But I am not here today to rant about colonialism but rather to share the following amusing passage from the book. The detective, Mma Ramotswe, muses about her feelings about hospitals and doctors. After reflecting that she is not ashamed of her weight or her corns she continues:

Now constipation was quite a different matter. It would be dreadful for the whole world to know about troubles of that nature. She felt terribly sorry for people who suffered from constipation, and she knew that there were many who did. There were probably enough of them to form a political party — with a chance of government perhaps — but what would such a party do if it was in power? Nothing, she imagined. It would try to pass legislation, but would fail.

Here in California the Constipation Party — with its two warring wings — is already in power. Will it also dominate our national politics, currently focused on the struggle to pass health insurance legislation?

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Image from the blog of the LA Times

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The Constipation Party

I’m starting to think about this for a book that is more than a year off (maybe this is a way of avoiding current projects!). I like the way the word looks with some of the sans serif faces, like Avenir, but when I tested this on a few readers (notably, the author) none of them preferred this treatment.

Right now (and this is very preliminary) I’m here:

But this is a kind of grotesque solution from a typophilic point of view, because the word is set in all caps in an uncial face (Neue Hammer Uncial) — and historical uncials didn’t really have caps.

But maybe that doesn’t matter?

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UPDATE: Here’s the face in action (combined with an image):

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What typeface says “Bali”?

Congratulations to Barack Obama and his campaign on their landslide victory, but even more so to the USA, which has taken a great step forward out of the depths of the past eight miserable years.

Obama’s win is being celebrated as a great moment in race relations and a triumph for black people. It is those, surely, which is wonderful and exquisitely moving.

At the same time, it’s worth remembering that America did not just select a black (as we strangely call a person with one black parent) president. It also selected a man who distinguished himself as steady, focused, capable, sensible, and eloquent. In a television interview, Obama colleague Valerie Jarrett spoke of his “core decency.” None of these are words we have heard in connection with our presidency in a long time.

So good on us.

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map via 538.com

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Obama!

Obama’s 9 votes up, so now he just has to run out the clock!

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Dixville Notch goes Obama

Someone gave me a Pogo book recently. Among memorable campaigns, the possum’s ranks high. Howland’s comment above reminds us that it’s a good thing for Obama that Democrats now control the secretary of state position in several swing states.

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I go Pogo

The McCain campaign, meanwhile, is still working on their clothing argument.

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UPDATE, 11/05, via Newsweek …

NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin’s shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain’s top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family–clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent “tens of thousands” more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast,” and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

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Tailored messages

Impossible not to talk politics now. So let’s look at the electoral map. It’s hard to see how McCain can pull this one out. Even Ohio + Florida don’t seem to give him enough, assuming:

• Obama sweeps New England and the lower northeast
  NY 31 + NJ 15 + MA 12 + MD 10 + CT 7 + ME 4 + NH 4 + RI 4 + VT 3 + DC 3 + DE 3 = 96EV
• In the rust belt, Obama takes PA 21 + MI 17 = 38EV
• Obama sweeps the north central states
  IL 21 + WI 10 + MN 10 + IA 7 = 48EV
• In the mountains and southwest, Obama takes CO 9 + NM 5 = 14EV
• Obama sweeps the Pacific states
  CA 55 +WA 11 +OR 7 +HI 4 = 77EV

Those states give 96+38+48+14+77 = 273EV

All of them look pretty strong for him right now. Even if he has losses among this group he could make up the electoral votes from the pool of swing states that includes FL 27, OH 20, NC 15, MO 11, NV 5 = 78EV

No wonder the McCain campaign is going for the hail mary. They need to hold all of the states I haven’t mentioned, take both FL and OH, pull at least one state from the Obama column listed above, plus pull additional states if they have any losses among the NC, MO, NV group, or indeed in any other states.

It’s likely we will see more attempts by the McCain campaign or its supporters to exploits racial fears especially in the southern seaboard states, where McCain needs to wrest VA, NC, SC, GA, and FL into his column by hook or by crook.

Obama needs to watch his back among the states I’ve counted for him (such as in NH, PA, MN, CO, NM) and keep the pressure on in FL, OH, NC, and other swing states. By all accounts he has a strong ground game, and if McCain goes into November in this same position, as seems likely, Obama had better have a lot of sharp people watching for chicanery at the polls, which will be McCain’s last shot at sneaking in.

We will probably see a lot of dirty tricks and many legal challenges related to polling in this election.

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Two weeks until election day

Although The Washington Post quoted advisers to Mr. McCain on Sunday as saying Ms. Palin had been subjected to an F.B.I. background check, an F.B.I. official said Monday the bureau did not vet potential candidates and had not known of her selection until it was made public.

Sounds like someone is not being truthful. Draw your own conclusions.

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Palin’s vetting

via language log

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Language is a virus

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Labor Day

Here’s the refinement I suggest: allow only one justice to be appointed during a particular presidential term. If another slot needs to be filled, appoint a temporary justice to serve until the next presidential term.

As we know from our history, many U.S. presidents are dimwits who should not be entrusted with this kind of legacy. This would spread the appointment of justices over more presidential terms, balancing things out a bit. It would not favor any particular position, such as liberal or conservative, but it would moderate the present randomness of the appointment process.

Someone help me get this enacted, okay?

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A proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution

• Fox News. You will be shocked — shocked! — to learn that they have been spinning items in a conservative direction.
• Diebold, the electronic voting machine vendor. Those rascals deleted 15 paragraphs critical of their machines.
• Walmart. It seems their employee compensation is better than some might think (same link as above)
• Mittromney.com. Someone there is leaning “a little more toward voting FOR Mitt Romney.”
• The BBC. Someone there thinks GWBush is a wanker.
• Whereas at the New York Times they just think he’s a “jerk.”
• The National Institute on Drug Abuse. Someone there prefered one of their press releases to the existing wikipedia article.
• Susan Collins. Someone in the senator’s office thought her entry didn’t make her sound moderate enough.
• Not to mention still more Republican hijinks, from the Republican Party of Minnesota. People there don’t like Harry Potter but they do like “penis gourds.”
• The CIA. Iran is on someone’s mind there.
• The Vatican. Someone there is interested in Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.
• And let’s not forget the Democratic National Committee, where someone felt that Rush Limbaught’s entry should not omit the highly pertinent observation that “Most of [his listeners] are legally retarded.“

No doubt more revelations will be forthcoming.

Update, 32 Aug. The Dutch royal family admits scrubbing an entry.

You didn’t think you had any privacy online, did you?

(The wikipedia scanner link, at this writing, is down .)

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Who has been editing Wikipedia?

“We’re fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq, and, let’s see, we went in, the United Nations … no that was, um, there were weapons of mass destruction, no wait, that was, let’s see, er ..”

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A New Test for Lying

Researchers have established in recent years that wealthier families tend to provide better nutrition for their children and, as a result, they tend to grow taller. The drastic differences in the United States between rich and poor, the researchers pointed out, mean that the US average is pulled down by those who struggle to get by. Whereas in the US, some 15 percent of the population has no health insurance and those on welfare can barely get by, almost all citizens of northern and western European countries enjoy universal health care and a generous social net. The result is that even those children dependent on welfare in Europe have a sufficient living standard, the researchers concluded.

The downward trend started right around the time Reagan was president. It’s been pretty much all downhill from then.

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Bad Health Care, Deficient Welfare Keep Americans Short

According to the lawyer of the alleged “D.C. Madam,” Vice President Cheney “isn’t not” on her list of phone records.

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Dick Cheney

Interesting. Republicans here, Democrats here. Via Vark.

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presidential candidates tag clouds

Via Wonkette.

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Colbert Rapport