Miscellany: 5/24/11

Quote of the Day

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

Carl Jung

My Vote For American Idol 2011: Scotty McCreery

Okay, this process, as I mentioned in a post a week ago last Friday, needs some reform. There's a notice on the website saying you can vote up to 50 times, but only AT&T wireless customers have the ability to enter an unlimited number of votes...

I was more impressed with McCreery's performance, and given my recent pattern of supporting the winner every other cycle, that would suggest Lauren Alaina will win it. Steve Tyler had picked Lauren from the auditions, and all 3 judges essentially favored Lauren. To make things even worse for Scotty, Lauren will probably get the sympathy vote given an early medical status report on one of her vocal cords she had injured during rehearsals, and then the original song chosen for Lauren  was a tribute to mothers. (What? No apple pie or Chevrolet?)

I've made it clear I believe at least 4 other singers were better than these two finalists, but McCreery clearly was a far more consistent singer than Lauren over the season. And home viewers sometimes overrule judge preferences (David Cook comes to mind).

And Another Important Election Today:
 The NY-26 Mediscare Election

In tribute to former Congressman Chris "Too Sexy For My Shirt" Lee:

Unsurprisingly, Democrat Kathy Hochul beat Republican Jane Corwin in line with prior projections.  This is an important lesson for the GOP and the Tea Party: they misjudged the important point that senior citizens understood that the health care reform bill put Medicare at risk. I don't think Paul Ryan's Medicare reform is as bad as the election of a Democrat to a heavily GOP district suggests (and it was the key issue), but as I've mentioned before, it represents change and risk. The problem is that the Democrats are refusing to be constructive here (as if allowing a $1.65T deficit didn't make that clear!) I think you need to do significant change--but you need to bide your time. When the opposing party controls the Senate and the Presidency, reforms like Ryan's are dead on arrival. There are other tactics which I would be championing--e.g., provide pricing and quality information on medical services and prescription/generic drugs, improve audits and malpractice tort reforms, offer flat-rate service contracts, vest senior citizens into saving medical costs, eliminate certain gold-plated benefits, lower doctor costs for regulatory compliance, apply deferred eligibility dates for higher-income people and charge means-tested premium increases, cap medication coverage at generic price levels, etc.

The Republicans have a difficult thing to do: they have to play bad cop (or else face the wrath of the Tea Party), while Obama and Reid can play good cop: it's their only hope of reelection.

Amateur Hour: Herman Cain and the Palestinian Right to Return

Herman Cain had a Sarah Palin moment on Fox News Sunday:

WALLACE: Where do you stand on the right of return?

CAIN: The right of return? The right of return?

WALLACE: The Palestinian right of return.

CAIN: That is something that should be negotiated. That is something that should be negotiated.

WALLACE: Do you think the Palestinian refugees, the people who were kicked out of the land in 1948, should be able or should have any right to return to Israeli land?

CAIN: Yes. But under -- but not under Palestinian conditions. Yes. They should have a right to come back if that is a decision that Israel wants to make.

Wallace does a good job in providing Cain a context, although I think many or most Israelis would argue with his characterization. It is true that some Palestinians were uprooted by the IDF, mostly for military defense reasons; however, in many cases Palestinian refugees left on their own accord based on war fears and/or encouragement and assurances from hostile Arab nations.

There are a couple of issues from the perspective of Israel. First, there's the hypocrisy over an unbalanced international perspective: in fact, large numbers of Jews were similarly displaced and their property also seized in an ignored alternate diaspora. Second, there's the question of the underlying population: about 75% of the 7.7M Israelis are Jewish. By various censuses, the estimated number of Palestinians that left after the creation of Israel could not have exceeded 650,000 (and a UN estimate was 472,000). Another 525,000 fled during the 1967 war. Roughly 4.7M are counted in refugee camps, about 42% in the Palestinian-controlled or administered Gaza Strip and West Bank. I don't speak for Israel, but my guess is that Israel would allow a limited number of validated, non-radical refugees to resettle within Israel's borders but not so many as to make the Jews a minority within their own homeland. I would also expect Israel to fully compensate Palestinians for any remaining, unsettled validated claim.

Going back to the FNS interview, Herman Cain later argued that moderator Chris Wallace had blindsided him on the refugee status issue, but how can you run for President and not have a fleshed-out foreign policy, particularly on the volatile Middle East? My takeaway from Cain's statement on the show is that the rights of Palestinians are not intrinsic but subject to Israeli approval. I would expect any serious Presidential candidate to be supportive of Israel but not to provide any prime minister a blank check.

How should he have responded? First of all, don't try to bluff a response. It's okay to defer discussion if you do not have a published position paper on the issue, especially given the sensitive nature of difficult Middle East negotiations. Whenever possible, demonstrate your familiarity with salient issues. Second, identify general policy objectives for the region, and compare and contrast against Obama Administration policy. Third, distinguish between American and Israel policy.

I am not going to attempt to suggest a response for Herman Cain, because I'm not familiar with his foreign policy objectives. I would make the following comments on my own. First, the issues of the Palestinians are not with the Israelis but with their own leadership; they must reject terrorism and embrace peaceful coexistence with the Jews. Second, the rights of the Palestinians must be balanced against those of the Israelis; for instance, when you discuss expulsion or abandoned property rights of the Palestinians, one must not be hypocritical but recognize the fact that many Jews themselves were forced in from their homes and/or stripped of property in foreign (especially Arab) lands. Third, as to the right to return to Israel proper, that must be negotiated; my personal opinion is that those who spurned earlier offers to return and/or left of their own volition made decisions which have consequences, and otherwise I think those who lived or whose parents both lived in Israel have stronger claims. At the same time, Israel needs to fairly compensate Palestinians for property abandoned or seized, and it is in the best interests of Israel to ensure an economically viable, prosperous neighboring Palestine.

Pawlenty: I Like the Blunt Talk Leadership: Thumbs UP!

Wow, Pawlenty used a stop in key retirement-state Florida to talk tough on the the need of future retirees to have more realistic expectations in the future about the Medicare and social security benefits. This is on top of Monday's jawboning on ethanol subsidies in Iowa. While some conservatives gripe that Pawlenty seems to have a kind of death wish, I like his style. Mitt Romney, I think Pawlenty just met your wager and raised it.

Brown v Platta 5-4: Thumbs UP!

I will not be popular, particularly among law-and-order conservatives, for my position here: agree with a liberal court? Generally, I would tend to agree with Judge Scalia: I don't like the idea of the court system micromanaging policy from the bench. But the problem is that California, the same state with 6-figure public sector lifeguards and retirees, has under-invested in its prison system; California had been repeatedly warned of overcrowding and delayed medical services to the point of violations of the eighth amendment (against cruel and unusual punishment). Hence, the state has been ordered to alleviate conditions to an acceptable level. The Court is not necessarily arguing to release prisoners--it notes there are many ways to skin a cat: you can built new prisons, expand capacity of existing ones, you can subcontract prisoners to private facilities or other states, you can hire more doctors/reduce the doctor burden, etc. It's not just dealing with the static population; for instance, as inmates are paroled, it makes room for other inmates--but if you're continuing to add people to the system, any vacancies quickly fill in a system nearly 200% capacity. So if you engage in sentencing reforms (lower sentences, fewer incarcerations, etc.), you can make a difference. Cato has an ax to grind here, noting on a percentage basis, the number of inmates confined as a result of the war on drugs has tripled from about 20% to 60% of the federal prison system.

Let me quote from an account of a plan submitted to the court to get the population to 137% capacity, ordered by the high court, or a reduction of about 37,000 to about 110,000:

A plan filed with the federal court in November 2009, laid out a five-year effort that achieves its reductions mostly through sentencing reforms. The bulk of the population decrease is estimated to come within 18 months of implementation.

CDCR projected a 27,000 prisoner count decline just by adding “no-prison” felonies, alternatives to custody, a more generous credits system and far fewer parolees re-entering.

Of those, the biggest provision would designate seven felony offenses as bringing no more than 366 days incarcerated. That reform would mandate those convicted of the designated offenses (listed below) to serve their time in county jails, rather than state prisons, bringing the population down 11,815.

The crimes include:

• Possession of a controlled substance, including cocaine.
• Possession of a controlled substance, including methamphetamine.
• Check fraud.
• Miscellaneous grand theft.
• Receiving stolen property.
• Petty theft with a prior conviction of a certain offense.
• Theft with a prior felony of a certain offense.

Under the plan, California would also continue moving some inmates to out-of-state facilities. Currently more than 10,000 california prisoners are serving their sentences in private prisons in four states. That number could increase to 15,000 by 2014.

In addition, Governor Brown has an initiative to shift non-serious/not-violent/non-sexual prisoners from state to county facilities.

Let me be clear here: we are not talking about country club prison facilities with cable TV and private accommodations. We are talking about things like a single toilet being shared by over 50 men or about inmates sometimes dying still waiting to be seen by a doctor. I understand that California has fiscal problems. But California has known for 20 years it has a serious problem, and Governor Schwarzenegger some 5 years ago called it an emergency. I don't have any friends or relatives in California's prison system, but if I did, I would be very upset by the callous disregard by the majority for the rights of the individuals. The Court's decision is a wake-up call for legislatures not to give short shrift to the human rights of prisoners.

Killebrew Retrospective

There is a good  Tom Verducci/Bob Costas interview on MLB.com (with brief video clips of Killebrew as a player) which you can watch in a separate browser tab or window.

Fukushima Nuclear Incident Update

Atomic Power Review notes:

• Monday: The confusing news releases from TEPCO and the Japanese regulators continues. One example is a press release which implies that damaged fuel in reactors 2 and 3 were unknown, unlike that from reactor 1. In fact, damaged fuel rods from all three reactors were hypothesized from the get-go given hydrogen explosions and radiation byproducts. It was also unreasonable to assume--given broad-based power failure--fuel damage would occur in one but not others.

NEI notes:

• Tuesday: Two heat exchangers (external cooling units) are to be installed for reactor 2. NEI also indicated after moving to weekly summaries a few weeks back, (like the Hiroshima Syndrome blog) it is increasing its Fukushima Daiichi updates to 3 times weekly.

Political Humor

A few originals:

• Well, we already knew about the sorry state of math education in our public schools. Harold Camping, the apocalyptic preacher, explained that he had forgotten to carry the 5, so the real end of the world is October 21, not May 21. He explained that he just wasn't that good at Numbers...or Deuteronomy...or Revelation... 
• President Obama is visiting Ireland. While there, he went out looking for leprechauns. When asked why by his foreign hosts, Obama explained, "With gold at $1526.45/ounce and the way "Helicopter Ben" Bernanke is printing money, I need that pot of gold..."

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups

Chicago, "Wishing You Were Here"