One More Reason Al Gore Invented the Internet Is...

... so that we can relive Bea Arthur singing in the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special. Circa 1978, I think I watched a VHS tape of part of the special once, which is notable for (a) being so hated by George Lucas that it's never been re-released in any form after its original showing, and (b) apparently being the first appearance of Boba Fett in a Star Wars production.



Merry Christmas, everyone.

Why Your Average Iranian Isn't Han Solo

Ilya Somin uses Han Solo to analyze why it's difficult to overthrow repressive regimes, and why people within them may choose not to rebel, even though they don't support the regime. I thought these points were particularly insightful...

Consider how different is the situation of most people suffering under oppressive governments from Han Solo’s. If any one of them tries to rebel, it is highly unlikely that their actions will have a decisive impact on the regime’s fate. On the other hand, they, unlike Han, don’t have the Millenium Falcon to escape in. If they defy the government, they will likely be caught and punished. Of course if all or most of them resist at once, they might well overthrow the state. But it is hard to coordinate a mass simultaneous uprising in a repressive regime, and the strong incentive for any individual is to free ride on the efforts of others. Ironically, the more repressive the regime, the more severe the collective action problem involved. That’s why a mass movement to overthrow the totalitarian North Korean government is far less likely than one that overthrows a run of the mill dictatorship that oppresses the people much less.

This point also explains why most repressive regimes that are overthrown fall either because they were taken down by a small clique of insiders (who can make individually decisive contributions because of their privileged positions of power) or by a mass uprising that occurs because the regime itself begins to liberalize and the people begin to think that dissent won’t be punished anywhere near as ruthlessly as before (this is what happened in Eastern Europe and the USSR in 1989–91, as Timur Kuran showed in a brilliant book). Sometimes, as in Iran this year, the people imagine the regime is less committed to repression than it actually is, and their resulting protests are brutally suppressed.

This analysis has many important implications. But I will focus on just one. The next time someone tells you that Soviet-era Russians, Iranians, North Koreans or any other population living under severe oppression actually support their rulers and their policies or are “just getting the government they deserve,” remember how different their situation is from Han Solo’s. And ask yourself what you would do in their place if any act of dissent you undertook was both highly unlikely to make a difference and likely to draw severe punishment such as death or imprisonment. Some courageous dissidents are brave enough to act despite such odds. But it’s understandable if most people aren’t.

As Somin points out later, the average North Korean or Iranian won't get to marry a princess if they choose to rebel. I'd also note that the average North Korean and Iranian don't have a Wookie owing them a life debt and standing alongside them.

Hope and Change Becomes Fear and Loathing

And he can't even blame this on media bias...

Barack Obama’s approval index number dropped to a new low today. Rasmussen reported:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 25% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President.
Forty-six percent(46%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -21
That’s the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President.

At the end of his second term President George W. Bush had a 43%
disapproval rating.

In less than one year Barack Obama managed to pi$$ off more people than
George W. Bush.

(hat tip: Instapundit) Yup, it's clear that W. is nowhere near as good a politician as Obama. It took W. eight whole years to have 43% of Americans strongly disapproving of him.

Let It Snow

I'm not condoning this in the least. It's just wrong.



(hat tip: KSK). I can't believe the brazen jerkwads who throw the snowballs from about a foot away. There's having harmless fun with a couple of playful throws of snow, and there's ganging up on people.

With that being said, it's generally just a dumb move to come to an Eagles game wearing an opposing team's jersey. To do it when Eagles fans are given a ready supply of free ammunition... yeesh.

I Wonder If He Does Baby Announcements

Well, this is actually funnier than some of Will Ferrell's recent movies...

Readers of the New York Times' "Weddings and Celebrations" section did a double-take yesterday over one wedding announcement. Jessie Fuller and Buck Rodgers appeared smiling together in the official photo accompanying their announcement -- with the actor Will Ferrell clearly standing behind them.

The announcement went on to explain the joke. Fuller and Rodgers are production assistants who met and fell in love on the set of the upcoming film "When in Rome." But when it came time to take their wedding announcement photo, Rodgers was working on another in-production movie, "The Other Guys," a buddy-cop comedy starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg, which is due to come out in late summer 2010.

It's unknown exactly whose idea it was for Ferrell to do a cameo in the couple's photo (and also their video, on the New York Times' website), but it gave many readers of what is usually one of the most formal sections of the newspaper a good laugh.

Everyone's missing the best part of the entire story, of course. The groom's name is Buck Rodgers, for crying out loud. If only the bride's name was Erin Gray... or she looked like Erin Gray, circa 1980...

Fail to the Deadskins

The worst trick play, ever? Well, they are the Redskins...



This is why, no matter how frustrated I get with Andy Reid, I am thankful for what we have in Philly. In D.C., they have a circus, and a poor circus at that. I like Shutdown Corner's description of the play...

From what I can tell, the plan was this: Snap the ball to the punter, let three defensive linemen run free at him, then have him heave the ball aimlessly into a group of six New York Giants as he gets drilled into the turf and hope that somehow results in a Redskins touchdown.

It did not. In fact, it almost resulted in a Giants touchdown. The only blessing for the Redskins is that their overall performance last night was so embarrassing that it almost overshadowed this massive train wreck of a play.

I like Mike Wise's theory, that Zorn was sticking it to the Redskins with that embarrassing playcall. As a confirmed Skins-hater, I'd love that to be the case, but would they mind beating up on Dallas next week? Just for kicks?

The Health Care Follies Continue

Well, the Democrats got past the filibuster. What was the price of Ben Nelson's vote? Unlike in the past, the truth is readily available...

We’ll be blunt. The ‘health care reform’ legislation under consideration in the Senate is the most corrupt piece of legislation in our nation’s history. Yes, we understand that is a strong statement and there have been other abominations throughout our nation’s life. But never before did corrupt legislation threaten to radically and forever change the live’s of every American.

Exhibit A is the outright bribe extracted by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Corn Huckster State) from Sen. Harry Reid. As a result of Nelson’s performance in his role of Hamlet in the health care deliberations, we will have two health care systems in this country; one for Nebraska and one for the other 49 states.

In its quixotic attempt to ensure everyone has health insurance, the Reid legislation greatly expands Medicaid eligibility. Because Medicaid is a program whose costs are split between the federal and state governments, this expansion in eligibility raise costs dramatically for states. States will be forced to either raise taxes or cut other services to accommodate the forced increase in Medicaid spending.

Unless that state is Nebraska.

Below is the text for Nelson’s bribe. Under this language the federal government will forever cover the costs of Medicaid expansion in Nebraska. Taxpayers in every other state will forever be responsible for the expanded Medicaid program in Nebraska.

I'm wondering what sort of goodies get passed out in the House. The question on Nelson's vote is whether the psuedo-bribe even helps Nelson in Nebraska...

It was the concern of Nebraska's Republican governor over expanded Medicaid costs in the proposed Senate health care overhaul bill that led to a compromise to cover his state's estimated $45 million share over a decade, U.S. Sen. Ben Nelson said Sunday.

Gov. Dave Heineman "contacted me and he said this is another unfunded federal mandate and it's going to stress the state budget, and I agreed with him," the Nebraska Democrat said. "I said to the leader and others that this is something that has to be fixed. I didn't participate in the way it was fixed."

But Heineman expressed anything but gratitude, saying he had nothing to do with the compromise and calling the overhaul bill "bad news for Nebraska and bad news for America."

"Nebraskans did not ask for a special deal, only a fair deal," Heineman said in a statement Sunday.

That criticism is only a taste of what Nelson has received since announcing Saturday that he would become the 60th vote needed to advance the landmark legislation.

Despite the perks Nelson managed to garner for Nebraska in finally agreeing to support the overhaul bill, the backlash from those who wanted Nelson to hold a hard line against the measure was immediate.

Abortion foes howled in protest. Nebraska Right to Life, which has long endorsed Nelson, issued a scathing statement that dubbed Nelson a traitor. The state's Catholic bishops followed Sunday with a statement that they were "extremely disappointed" in him.

The chairman of Nebraska's Republican Party declared Nelson's decision to be the end of his political career in Nebraska, and within hours of Nelson's announcement, the state GOP launched a Web site, , to collect funds to oust the Democrat in the 2012 election.http://www.givebentheboot.com

Nebraska's Republican Sen. Mike Johanns said he was "stunned and incredibly disappointed," and called the compromise's abortion language a "watered-down accounting gimmick that leads to Nebraska taxpayers subsidizing abortions in other states."

The compromise tries to maintain a strict separation between taxpayer funds and private premiums that would pay for abortion coverage. It would also allow states to restrict abortion coverage in new insurance marketplaces.

Nelson obtained increased federal funds to cover his state's cost of covering an expanded Medicaid population at what one Democratic official estimated at $45 million over a decade.

Big Government certainly thinks it's a bribe. The deal is so bad, Nelson may be backing away from the benefits due to the home state backlash (and because other Senators are asking for the same benefit for their state). Even if it's business as usual for Congress, that makes it worse, not better. Hell, Dana Milbank has a nice list of all the goodies Senators got in exchange for their votes -- perhaps it's not wrong because all the cool kids are doing it. And it's official -- health care reform is more important that the environment, since Harry Reid dispatched a special plane to New Jersey to get the state's Senators back to D.C. in time for the cloture vote. Carbon footprint, indeed.
As for the bill, Richard Epstein thinks it's unconstitutional; unfortunately, so was McCain-Feingold, and the Supremes ducked that decision, and they would probably steer clear of declaring health care reform DOA. But even the left is admitting the bill's filled with accounting tricks to make it look deficit-friendly; somewhere the jailed and paroled execs who ran Enron are coming to the realization that they merely should have run for office to protect themselves (plus, you have the added benefit of spending other people's money). Pete Wehner analyzes the fallout...

1. Few Democrats understand the depth and intensity of opposition that exists toward them and their agenda, especially regarding health care. Passage of this bill will only heighten the depth and intensity of the opposition. We’re seeing a political tsunami in the making, and passage of health-care legislation would only add to its size and force.

2. This health-care bill may well be historic, but not in the way the president thinks. I’m not sure we’ve ever seen anything quite like it: passage of a mammoth piece of legislation, hugely expensive and unpopular, on a strict party-line vote taken in a rush of panic because Democrats know that the more people see of ObamaCare, the less they like it.

3. The problem isn’t simply with how substantively awful the bill is but how deeply dishonest and (legally) corrupt the whole process has been. There’s already a powerful populist, anti-Washington sentiment out there, perhaps as strong as anything we’ve seen. This will add kerosene to that raging fire.

Read the whole thibng, since Wehner also covers how the bill impacts President Obama. But maybe a look at the polls on the plan, as well as the polls on Obama himself, will suffice. Megan McArdle finds the whole thing inexplicable...

At this point, the thing is more than a little inexplicable. Democrats are on a political suicide mission; I'm not a particularly accurate prognosticator, but I think this makes it very likely that in 2010 they will lost several seats in the Senate--enough to make it damn hard to pass any more of their signature legislation--and will lose the house outright. In the case of the House, you can attribute it to the fact that the leadership has safe seats. But three out of four of the Democrats on the podium today are in serious danger of losing their seats.

No bill this large has ever before passed on a straight party-line vote, or even anything close to a straight party-line vote. No bill this unpopular has ever before passed on a straight party-line vote. We're in a new political world. I'm not sure I understand it.

The irony of this is that this bill is great for me personally. I'm probably uninsurable, and I'm in a profession where most people now end up working for themselves at some point in their career. So mandatory community rating is great news for me and mine. But I think that it's going to be a fiscal disaster for my country, because the spending cuts won't be--can't be--done the way they're implemented in the bill. We've just increased substantially the supply of unrepealable, unsustainable entitlements. We've also, in my opinion, put ourselves on a road that leads eventually to less healthcare innovation, less healthcare improvement, and more dead people in the long run. Obviously, progressives feel differently, and it will never be possible to prove the counterfactual.

What's great is that the CBO is already pointing out additional problems with the bill, which won't make it more popular. Indeed, the Dems have already lost a House seat, as Parker Griffith of Alabama just switched parties.

Bill Kristol thinks the bill could still fail, thanks in part to the Dems' attempt to protect the Independant Medicare Advisory Board from future Congressional interference. Back to McArdle, who explains why process should be more important to the Dems' grand scheme...

My procedural complaints are somewhat more obscure. The biggest one is that I am beginning to believe that in order to get this bill passed, the Democrats basically gutted the CBOl. Not because they were working with the CBO to get estimates--that's the CBO's job, to provide Congress with a cost. But rather, because this bill was something novel in the history of legislation. Previous Congresses wrote bills, and then trimmed them to get a better CBO score: witness the Bush tax cut sunsets. But the Congressional Democrats started out with a CBO score they wanted, and worked backward to the bill. They've been pretty explicit about the fact that no one wants this actual bill; rather, the plan is to pass basically anything, and then go and totally rewrite it when the budget spotlight is off. I'm not aware of any other piece of legislation that was passed this way.

Essentially, the Democrats have finished the process of gaming the CBO scores. They're now meaningless. You don't pass a piece of legislation that bears any resemblance to what you intend to end up with; you pass a piece of legislation that gets a good CBO score, and then go and alter it piece by piece.

This is obviously troubling because major bills will no longer have any meaningful deficit control--minor bills will presumably be done the old fashioned way, where congressmen have an actual passing interest in cost-benefit analysis.

But it's also troubling because Democrats aren't going to go back and modify the bill into something good, the way that many of them are currently imagining. The bill will be modified, piece by piece, according to the same crappy process that produced the current monstrosity: horse trading, log rolling, and all. (Yes, even if you use the magic of budget reconciliation, which still offers lavish opportunities for pork and stupidity). Some of the things you think you are going to get, you won't; they may very well be the crucial parts that make everything else work as you actually plan. At every step, the bill is probably more likely to get worse than to get better. At any rate, passing a bill based on either a meaningless CBO score, or the notion that it can be rewritten to spec at some later date, is not a process for generating good legislation.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are apparently attempting to prevent future Congresses from altering bits of the legislation that they do like...

All politicians attempt to make their pet projects as difficult to repeal as possible, but as far as I know, this is an unprecedented and troubling power grab. If this sort of tactic became common in legislation--and actually worked--the country really would become, as the liberals have been complaining, "ungovernable".

Before my readers start accusing me of hypocrisy--I just complained that the process of changing the bill will be messy and likely to make it worse, and now I'm complaining that Reid is trying to prevent the bill from being changed--let me explain. These are two different problems. Legislation does sometimes need to be changed. Making it impossible to do so is not a good idea. But passing crappy legislation that has to be changed in order to function as you desire it is not a good idea.

The Democrats response' thus far has been to label the opposition as fringe elements... or as Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse charged, we're all members of right-wing militias and Aryan support groups. Senator, I'm not sure where I fit -- I don't own a gun, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be the ideal member for an Aryan support froup.

At the end, I think we're headed toward the Democrats passing a gawdawful bill, poisoning the well for the prospect of bi-partisan progress on other bills, leading to their eventual loss of the majority in the House, and a House and Senate effort to try to overturn the same legislation (which will be when Dems recover their respect for the filibuster). It will be bad for the Dems current office holders and for the country. Unfortunately, it will probably be even worse for the country.

Man, It's a Good Thing The Eagles Made the Playoffs

Great, I have to go to Deadspin to find out the real reason my favorite hockey team is in a serious tailspin...

A season that many thought would be a promising turning point for the Philadelphia Flyers has devolved into a chaotic nightmare of failed playoff dreams. So obviously someone must be banging a teammate's wife, right?

Right around the time that the Flyers were drubbed by division rival Pittsburgh this week, the blog "The Philly Four" addressed the rumor that dissension had split the Philly locker room in half. The alleged cause of the partisan bickering? Centerman Jeff Carter is boning the wife of teammate Scott Hartnell. Ouch.

A source close to the Flyers (who is not the editor of this website) tell us that the affair rumor is untrue, although there is a history of these sorts of stories being bandied about. Urban legend has it that Philly's own Rod Brind'Amour was traded to Carolina after Eric Lindros slept with his woman. Ted Nolan was allegedly fired from his coaching duties in Buffalo because he slipped one past the goalie's wife. Brendan Shanahan's current spouse is the ex-spouse of his former St. Louis Blues teammate Craig Janney. (That one is true, actually.) Basically, anytime two guys on a hockey team don't get along, every one just automatically assumes that someone slipped into someone else's penalty box It's (almost) always nonsense, but it does make for good barroom talk.

The lesson here? Marriage ruins sports. See Woods, Tiger.

Jokes aside, I loved this comment regarding the Lindros/Brind'Amour rumors: "In Lindros's defense, he was unconscious when that happened."

I'm Going To The Chapel and I'm Gonna... Sign a Bill

I have no objection to D.C. passing a law allowing for gay marriage; while I'm a conservative, I'm more of a libertarian than many of my fellow right-wing conspiracists. If gay people want to get married, that's fine; I just feel sorry for them that they have to pay the District's taxes. But this struck me as more than a little odd..

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty will sign legislation Friday to legalize same-sex marriage in the District at a bill-signing ceremony so historic that his staff scrambled to find the perfect location Thursday.

Would it be All Souls Unitarian Church, a Northwest house of worship known for its diversity, liberalism and welcoming of same-sex couples? Would it be Covenant Baptist Church, a predominantly black church in Southwest where husband-and-wife team of Dennis and Christine Wiley serve as co-pastors and support gay marriage? Or would it be a secular site?

Late in the day, Katie Loughary, executive director at All Souls, said it appeared that Covenant was winning. "We're disappointed, yes," she said. "But we're excited that it's happening."

But the letdown was turned around when the Rev. Robert Hardies, All Souls' senior pastor, said that he had been contacted by the mayor's office and told that his church would be the spot.

Why is the perfect location a church, other than a naked attempt to claim religious support for the legislation? I can see signing certain bills in a church (think of Bush's faith-based initiatives), but even then it seems inappropriate. Ann Althouse feels the same way...

What a shameful and embarrassing display! Here you are, purporting to extend rights to people, and flouting the fundamental principle of keeping government separate from religion. The perfect location? Yes, it was the perfect location to show your lack of respect for constitutional limitations on government.

I tend to think the wall between church and state is conceptually overblown, but Fenty's the one who comes from a political party which shares an ideological bent with the ACLU, which has the vapors when a creche shows up within 3 blocks of a courthouse. I would be exceedingly impressed if they showed up to protest the bill signing, but I'm not holding my breath.

It's Time To Start the Music

Seriously, this could be an annoying song post, but it's so much better than that. Loyal reader ST sent this to me about two weeks ago, and I finally got around to posting it. Even if you hate the song (the repeated playing of it would probably be useful as an enhanced interrogation technique against al-Qaeda), there is nothing funnier than Animal shouting, "Mama!"

Absolut Sponsored This Study

Science, bringing you the information you really need...

A new study may help drinkers pick their poison. In a head-to-head comparison, bourbon gave drinkers a more severe hangover than vodka, report Damaris Rohsenow of Brown University and colleagues in an upcoming issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

But vodka drinkers aren’t off the hook: Drinkers’ sleep suffered equally with both drinks, as did their performance on tasks requiring attention and quick responses. Understanding the lingering effects of alcohol after a night of heavy drinking is important for people who engage in safety-sensitive tasks, such as driving, while hung over Rohsenow says.

The researchers recruited 95 healthy young adults, ages 21 to 33, and gave them caffeine-free cola mixed with bourbon, vodka or tonic water. The drinking ended when participants’ breath-alcohol concentrations hit an average of 0.11, well over the legal intoxication limit. Participants were then hooked up to sleep monitors, which record brain activity, and allowed to sleep it off. At 7 a.m. the next day, the researchers roused the subjects from bed (a wake-up that did not include coffee or aspirin) and asked them to rate the severity of their hangovers.

Overall, bourbon drinkers reported feeling worse than vodka drinkers, rating higher on scales that measure the severity of hangover malaise, including headache, nausea, loss of appetite and thirst. It should come as no surprise that alcohol drinkers said they felt much worse than those who had drunk only tonic water.

One reason for the different effects of vodka and bourbon, Rohsenow says, could be that bourbon contains 37 times more toxic compounds than vodka does, including nasty organic molecules such as acetone, acetaldehyde, tannins and furfural. A good rule of thumb for liquors, she says, is that the clearer they are, the less of these substances they contain.

The important question is, where was this study when I was in college? Or law school?