Don't tell anyone! That WAS our own John Amato crashing Chelsea's wedding with his long-time squeeze Liz Cheney!

Open thread below...

Happy Birthday to our own John Amato!!! (And as a surprise we got his squeeze to jump out of the cake.)

Open thread below.

I've been seeing a number of op-eds in recent defense journals that have a slightly hysterical, paranoid perspective on the "dangers" of health care reform. The authors of these articles are terrified that mounting costs of health care are going to impinge on the defense budget. Democrat attempts to give all Americans insurance may increase overall health care costs. As a result, a weakened America will be just wide-open to attack by terrorists and China and who knows what else. Think I'm exaggerating? Here's Harvey Sapolsky, a defense academic out of MIT, talking in the National Defense journal.

The defense spending squeeze is on and will become more constricted by health care reform. It is not apples and oranges. About half of the United States’ health care costs appear on the federal government’s budget, which directly affects revenues and expenditures. European nations plead poverty when it comes to funding their militaries in large part because of the squeeze of social spending (including health care). They spend a smaller, though rising, share of their GDPs on health than does the United States, but more of that spending is direct government expenditure.

If heath care can’t be made more efficient and if access to health care can’t be limited, the only alternative is more revenue. Perhaps taxes will be raised. Some will be increased, but not likely enough to cover rising health expenditures. Democrats promise to only tax the rich. But, as the rich know, tax laws have loopholes. Republicans have run for years on a tax-cutting platform. The way to get revenue is to tax the middle class who are many and who are not as fleet of foot as the rich. But both Republicans and Democrats constantly say the middle class is the victim of everything, and surely overtaxed. Running up the deficit is an alternative, but the wars, the stimulus plan and the bailouts have already done that. The cries for controlling spending are already being heard.

The revenue for more health care exists in the form of defense expenditures, which have doubled since 9/11. The billions needed for reforming health will likely come, in one way or another, from cuts in defense spending. Personnel reductions will be hard to make because of the burdens that Iraq and Afghanistan deployments place on U.S. forces. Fewer and fewer aircraft and ships will be bought. There will also be less training and more restrictions on operations with and for allies. America has a powerful military that will take a while to unravel, but unravel it will. The nation’s defense budget is about to tangle with a really dangerous adversary.

Sapolsky's article is actually one of the more sane pieces that I've read. He at least argues for the urgent need for health care reform, least its uncontrolled growth threaten defense spending. He does note that the defense budget has become an attractive target because of its enormous, unchecked growth (you rob banks because that's where the money is). But I think that he (and others) suffer under a number of false assumptions - notably, that health care costs cannot be restrained, the general perception that the defense budget has grown too large, Democrats like health care and hate the military, therefore, the defense budget will suffer cuts to allow the continued growth of health care.

However, the conclusion is limited by its bad assumptions. There is no question that the health care industry can use a healthy dose (no pun intended) of reform, and Medicare/Medicaid will eventually need to be examined in depth as well for reform. Maybe every senior citizen doesn't need a motorized wheelchair (gasp!). Similarly, the need for defense acquisition reform is well documented, despite numerous failed attempts to correct bad practices and to encourage the services to moderate their demands for high-tech, gold-plated defense platforms.

The challenge is that any reforms to either health care or the defense acquisition processes will impact Big Business hard, and it has gotten fat and happy over the past decade. With the recent Supreme Court decision allowing Big Business to buy politicians, it's going to be increasingly hard to reform either health care or defense acquisition. Not that it was easy now - with the Republican party of "NO," continued obstructionism in Congress will ensure that no tough decisions are made - rather, the politicians will favor incremental steps towards reform as long as they are firewalled from blame or implication to any budget cuts.

The cries of doom from the defense journal op-eds are misguided. No one is going to cut defense funds until the pace of military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq changes to allow for a drawdown on operational spending. That doesn't involve any changes to the ridiculously out-of-control acquisition process, unfortunately, but that makes it easy for both Democrats and Republicans. Similarly, no one is going to seriously address mounting health care costs as long as there is no change in willingness to add debt to the federal deficit. I used to hope that a new generation of politicians, replacing the grey, old white men in the House and Senate, might cause change, but that's probably too optimistic.

UPDATE: Rob Farley tears down Sapolsky's argument in detail, where I only pointed to the general failure of the "we can't have both health care and defense programs" argument.

First, the bad news:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Employers cut a larger-than-expected 467,000 jobs in June, driving the unemployment rate up to a 26-year high of 9.5 percent, suggesting that the economy's road to recovery will be bumpy.

The Labor Department report, released Thursday, showed that even as the recession flashes signs of easing, companies likely will want to keep a lid on costs and be wary of hiring until they feel certain the economy is on a solid ground.

June's payroll reductions were deeper than the 363,000 that economists expected.

However, the rise in the unemployment rate from 9.4 percent in May wasn't as sharp as the expected 9.6 percent. Still, many economists predict the jobless rate will hit 10 percent this year, and keep rising into next year, before falling back.

All told, 14.7 million people were unemployed in June.

If laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work are included, the unemployment rate would have been 16.5 percent in June, the highest on records dating to 1994.

Since the recession began in December 2007, the economy has lost a net total of 6.5 million jobs.

As the downturn bites into sales and profits, companies have turned to layoffs and other cost-cutting measures to survive. Those include holding down workers' hours and freezing or cutting pay.

The average work week in June fell to 33 hours, the lowest on records dating to 1964.

The worse news: as some economists predicted, the stimulus package was too small to affect the "real" economy - you know, the one you and I live in? - in any significant way. Sounds like those who urged Obama to think large and visionary (a la FDR's Public Works Administration) really did have the right idea:

Reporting from Washington -- Even as the nation's economy begins clawing its way out of the worst recession in 60 years, there are growing signs that this recovery could come with an unsettling twist: The wheels of commerce may begin to turn again without any substantial boost in jobs.

Not only is the national unemployment rate, now 9.4%, likely to climb into double digits later this year, but it is also expected to remain there well into 2010, economists say. That would prolong the misery of the unemployed, squeeze retailers and other businesses, and add millions of dollars in government costs and lost productivity. It could even threaten the recovery itself.

Though it's common for the jobless rate to keep climbing for a time after economic output turns positive, the aftermath of the last two downturns, in 1990-91 and 2001, introduced the idea of a "jobless recovery." Even though the economy improved, many unemployed workers discovered that jobs as good as the ones they'd lost were almost impossible to find.

This time, many economists say, there are new factors that could make the problem worse. Many more layoffs in this recession have been permanent, not temporary.

Our man skippy the bush kangaroo went to show his support of the WGA strike in Hollywood, and it looks like there's going to be some more picketers out there:

it looks like the networks are going to get squeezed from all sides. the news writers for cbs have voted to go on strike. hollywood reporter:

after working without a contract for more than two years, cbs news employees represented by the wga east have approved a strike through an authorization vote.

eighty-one% of the 75%-80% of the union's rank and file who turned out in a special election thursday and friday voted to authorize the strike. that, however, doesn't mean a strike is imminent. it first would have to be approved by the negotiating committee and upper echelon of the wga.

the wga already is in a three-week-old strike with many of its members in a separate union for tv and film writers, which has resulted in picket lines in new york and on the west coast. the cbs news union's negotiating committee is scheduling a meeting after thanksgiving to assess the situation, wgae president michael winship said..[..]

if this were a conservative blog, we'd make some crack about how the cbs news execs were going to have to make the news up themselves now.

I don't know about you, but I'm seriously jonesing for The Daily Show and Colbert Report...anything that's gonna squeeze the networks into getting to the table and negotiating is good with me.

The Sunday Talking Head line-up is ready for perusal. Thought I'd kick off everyone's morning today with a little Squeeze and some Black Coffee In Bed.

Lots of Tony Snow — lots and lots and lots. The Colin Powell interview on Meet the Press could be interesting - or nothing but a lot of hot air and equivications. I’m betting on the latter, but will be very happy indeed if it is the former because who couldn’t use a bit of truth on a Sunday morning? It would be a nice change from the usual, anyway.

Bob Geiger has some spot-on political cartoons ready for the browsing — my personal favorite is the pass off of the “go directly to jail card.” So, what's catching your eye on the blogs or in the news this morning?

Check out this video from ABC News: "Rising interest rates squeeze homeowners to the breaking point."

(h/t Joan)

Roger Simon's silly Googliness

Here's some of that stellar "Pajamas Media" reporting that I've been hearing so much about. Roger Simon is upset because Google is censoring it's content to appease the Chinese Google. Here's his solution:

"Everyone who cares about the free-flow of information, about democracy in China, in fact about democracy anywhere, should start selling their Google stock."

Here's his catch:

" Full disclosure: I do not own any Google stock, but would, I'm assuming, have the courage of my convictions, if I did.)"

He's assuming? That's pretty bold of him. Don't you know if you have the courage to do it? I'll assume you wouldn't-not at $434.00 a share. It's also pretty embarrassing when your own commenters think it's a dumb idea.

Pamela is right there with Moses Whine, but only because Google refused to appoint her fantasy squeeze Charles Johnson as a legitimate news source.

James Wolcott has a much better take on it than me.

John Dean is the Cheney Firewall

Firedoglake has some great analysis of Dean's segment on Countdown with Keith Olberman:

"Dean basically reiterated what David Gergen said earlier today, that Fitzgerald's tactics are probably meant to squeeze Scooter. He referred to Scooter as the firewall to Cheney, and said that the indictments brought down today were quite probably intended to test the resilience of that firewall...read on"

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT

Bittorrent-QT

Mark also has some interesting thoughts: "There was nothing to keep Fitzgerald from saying, had it been true, something like: "The investigative phase of this case is now over. The grand jury has indicted the only person we thought, on the evidence we now have, had provably committed a crime worthy of prosecution...read on"