Grisly game theory: can you avoid torture?

Marginal Revolution

Let us say that you have been captured and threatened with torture. You are, for whatever reason, entirely willing to betray the information you hold. Your primary goal is to avoid pain, and perhaps you positively want to squeal. How should you present what you know? I see a few options:

1. Break down immediately, beg for mercy, humiliate yourself, and spill the beans. (If you talk right away, will they torture you anyway? And since no further good information can be offered why should they stop?)

2. Go in acting tough, really tough. At the first sign of serious pain, start crying and switch to strategy #1.

3. Wait until they apply their "best shot" torture, and then talk. They will feel they have done their job and stop.

4. First offer (or make up) compromising information to show your disloyalty to the cause your torturers are fighting. Your confession will then be more credible.

5. Say you don't know anything, try to fight the torture, but break down when you can't stand it any more. You can't fool them, so the best you can do is to actually "go through the wringer." You are stuck in the pooling equilibrium, and trying to deviate only makes you worse off.

Which of these is the most credible signal that you have told all you know? Can you do any better than number five? And how does your best answer depend upon the hypothesized motives of the torturers? Is there anything you can say to the U.S. to avoid being sent out for rendition? I don't see any simple answer here, the question is which behavior your torturers will interpret as an unlikely tactic from a truly determined trickster.

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Bart Stupak's trying a new tactic to get the abortion deal that he wants into HCR. He calls it the "enrollment corrections bill." He was on GMA today and shed some light on it.

Stephanopoulos asked about the idea floated by Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), another pro-life Democrat, to hold a separate vote on reinstating the Stupak language on abortion insurance, as a whole different bill. Stupak said that this was one possibility -- but he wanted to make sure such a bill would in fact be signed into law.

"Okay, we pass the bill, it has to go to the Senate. This is an enrollment corrections bill. It has to be passed before the president would sign the Senate bill. So there's a long ways to go," said Stupak. "And you know, dealing with the Senate has been unusually difficult these last two years, so I'm not a lot of confident it's gonna go any farther than the House of Representatives."

David Waldman explains what Stupak has in mind.

Lordy, Lordy, Lordy. You're not gonna believe how low down in the weeds we're gonna have to get for this one.

We just learned from mcjoan that Bart Stupak is after a deal that would somehow jam a foot in the health insurance reform door for his now-notorious Stupak amendment on abortion:

This morning, during an appearance on Good Morning America, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) reaffirmed that he might vote for the Senate health care bill if Democrats pass the Stupak abortion amendment as a separate measure. Stupak said that Democrats have shown a "renewed" interest in tying his amendment to the Senate bill:

STUPAK: George, that’s called an enrollment corrections bill. I presented that to leadership about ten days ago. There’s renewed interest in that piece of legislation that I and a number of us are ready to introduce. It’s prepared. Everybody’s looking at it right now. That’s one way, maybe. But we set the deal with the Senate. You give us a vote in the House. We had a vote in the House. It was overwhelmingly 240-194, to keep public law, no public funding for abortion.

It seems to me that if the Senate parliamentarian is indeed insisting that the reconciliation bill address "current law," then that means the Senate bill must be not only enrolled, but signed by the President before reconciliation can be considered, at least in the Senate. I assume the House parliamentarian has no such objection to the House beginning its work (which is curious in itself), since he's apparently allowing the House to consider and pass reconciliation before the Senate bill is enrolled.

He went on MSNBC later with Norah and she first tried to get him to admit that the HCR bill as it stands now does not allow for government funding for abortions, but even with all the facts that she had like the AP and fellow pro-life Dems who are now supporting the bill, he flatly denies it. He calls it a "drastic break from current law for the last thirty three years." Even Allen Boyd is voting yes now.

(h/t Heather for the video)

There are a lot of rumors swirling, but we're hearing that Stupak may very well get his wish since the vote appears to be so close in the House and as a friend emailed: "I knew they would go there because that was the path of least resistance."

Please donate to Connie's campaign so we can take Stupak down.

Via Twitter:

Pro-choice female Dems are shuttling in and out of Pelosi's office and they won't say why.

Even if they calculate accurately and know this latest Stupak bullshit won't pass, it really sucks that pro-choice women have to deal with this issue from the Democratic Party for years to come.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) wants to scare off Justice Dept lawyers from professionally addressing the Gitmo detainee issue. Spencer Ackerman reports:

In the latest bit of brazen slander from the right, Republican Senators are trying to invent a scandal about Justice Department lawyers who — horror — represented Guantanamo detainees. You know, provided the representation that the Rehnquist and Roberts Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled those detainees are entitled? And which even the military commissions provide for? Instead, there’s this McCarthyite tactic of calling Justice Department lawyers the “Gitmo Nine,” a name that oh-so-cleverly suggests that those lawyers were themselves detained at Guantanamo.

To reiterate: Republicans have no actual desire to seriously address national security issues. If the Democrats find their balls, maybe they can take a shot at closing out this shameful chapter of American history.

Greg Sargent finds some interesting poll results on reconciliation.

With the spin war shifting to a battle over the meaning and implications of “reconciliation,” there will be more and more argument over what polls indicate about the public’s attitude toward the tactic.

Here’s some more fodder for this argument: A new batch of polls by the nonpartisan Research 2000 indicates that in key states, majorities are okay with the use of reconciliation — if the question is worded in a certain way.

The polls — sent over by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, DFA and Credo, which sponsored them — ask the question this way:

If the Senate passes a health care reform bill that you consider to be beneficial to your family, would you object to the Senate’s use of “reconciliation” rules to pass that bill with a majority vote, or not?

In Nevada, 55% wouldn’t object; in Illinois, 67% wouldn’t object; in Washington state, 65% wouldn’t object; in Missouri, 58% wouldn’t object; in Virginia, 60% wouldn’t object; in Iowa, 66% wouldn’t object; and in North Dakota, 53% wouldn’t object.

The key here, obviously, is that the question casts the legislation as “beneficial to your family,” which of course makes it more likely that people will be okay with using reconciliation to pass it.

The PCCC is doing a great job getting this polling done. David Axlerod whacked the Republicans for the whining on reconciliation too.

"The American people ... all they want is an up or down vote. They want to move on, have the vote, let's finish the debate. The American people say let the vote be held, let the majority rule and let's move on," Axelrod said.

"Let's move forward," he repeated several times.

The Republican abuse of the filibuster is finally even getting to the American people.

Think Progress:

One of the greatest obstacles to passing progressive legislation in Congress has been the use of the filibuster in the Senate. With upwards of “40 cloture votes since the start of the 111th Congress in January, this Senate is on pace to record the second-largest number of filibuster roll calls,” transforming what was intended to be a seldom-used procedural tactic into an all-out tool for obstructionism. Now, a new CBS/New York Times poll finds that more Americans support ending the filibuster and requiring legislation to pass by a simple majority:

As you may know, the Senate operates under procedures that effectively require 60 votes, out of 100, for most legislation to pass, allowing a minority of as few as 41 senators to block a majority. Do you think this procedure should remain in place, or do you think it should be changed so that legislation is passed with a simple majority?

Should remain 44

Should be changed 50

[Don't Know] 6

I would bet you that on January 1, 2009, most American had no idea what the filibuster even was. The constant abuse of this practice is not escaping the notice of our citizens. And you know the only reason why Americans are getting fed up with the filibuster is because the liberal blogosphere has been getting this information out there to the American people.

Jonathan Martin reports in The Politico that the Bush-bashing policy has not worked for the Democrats so they are abandoning it.

After three consecutive losses in statewide races, some top Democrats are questioning a tactic aimed at boosting the party’s candidates in each of those contests: Bush-bashing.

Running as much against the Bush White House as he was running against Sen. John McCain, Barack Obama easily carried Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts in 2008.

Bashing Bush in local races will not help if it doesn't emanate from the White House. Axelrod never made it a priority to attack conservatism and George Bush or Ronald Reagan and the country was primed for it. They did mention that Obama inherited this mess from Bush, but they missed a monumental chance to shake conservative principles for years to come, had Barack Obama actually attacked not just Bush but conservatism and called it (rightly so) a complete failure, beginning from the day he decided to run for president.

And then he could have pilloried them the entire time, both in the campaign and even after he took office. Reagan blamed liberals and big government constantly for his early failures, and it worked for him. Bush followed suit and bashed Clinton, but for some reason they didn't find it appealing.

The country witnessed a complete meltdown under George Bush except for the very wealthy, but if you never make the case on a national level, Americans will soon forget about him and blame the person that is in charge because their lives are no better. In reality, it takes years to dig out of the kind of economic collapse we just witnessed, if at all.

Democrats said that invoking Bush’s name doesn’t have the same impact now, in part for a fairly obvious reason: He’s not in charge anymore.

And the anger toward the political establishment that helped lift Obama and so many Democratic candidates in 2008 has now been transferred to the party in power.

If President Obama and his staff had made Bush bashing -- and calling out conservatism -- a priority, it would have been a potent weapon, because they had the truth on their side. Instead, it was another lost opportunity and now it falls to bloggers to make the case that conservatism is an ideology that doesn't succeed. It's never worked, and it never will work. Conservatives like to forget that Ronald Reagan raised taxes because he had to. If he didn't he would have been a single-term president.

Mike Lux writes a very disturbing piece about something that he warned us about back in June. It's called a Trigger.

The moment I am talking about is the debate of the so-called trigger mechanism for having a public option in health care insurance.

The insurance lobby has had multiple tactics for stopping the public option idea, which they despise because they know if regular folks have choice to go to a public option, insurance companies won't have the same ability to treat their customers like garbage when they get sick. The first tactic was just to try to kill the public option outright, and the good news is that they appear to have failed at that. This so-called trigger proposal is the second tactic: the idea is to write a "trigger" that will allow for a public option only under certain conditions, but write the legislation so that those conditions would never get met in the real world. It's a classic DC tactic, right up there with calling for a commission to study something. Olympia Snowe is carrying the insurance industry water on their trigger proposal, proposing triggers that would only get tripped in some fairyland none of us have ever visited.

Rahm bragged about it in July, but then was forced to backpedal on it when we all came out and raised bloody hell.

Rahm Reassures Angry House Members that Obama Backs Public Plan, No Trigger

As Lux describes it now, the White House is obsessed with Olympia Snowe and they are willing to allow her to write the language in the bill that adds the trigger to the public option. but she will basically eliminate any chance a trigger will actually get triggered.

Are you confused?

Media reports and insider buzz make it increasingly clear that key people at the White House have become obsessed with Olympia Snowe on health care, and are willing to do pretty much whatever she demands in order to get her on board. The price is looking more and more like this incredibly bad trigger proposal she has been pushing, a trigger that quite literally is written to automatically never trigger a public option. You see, Senator Snowe is writing language into an amendment that is literally a Catch-22. The legislative language says that a public option will be set up in a state in which health care is not affordable to 95% of the state's residents, but it defines affordability as after the new tax credits that are written into the bill to make health care affordable. Not only would this be an incredibly weak public option (doing it in one state will mean it can't get the market power to compete with the big insurers), but it would be a public option that is written by its definition to never be triggered. This is a trigger specifically, intentionally designed to kill the public option...read on

Please keep up the pressure and don't allow Rahm or the White House negotiate the public option away with bullshit triggers put there by Olympia Snowe.

HCAN writes: The Snowe Trigger - A catch-22 to kill the public health insurance option

Olympia Snowe's trigger is a plan to kill the public health insurance option. Not kill it as in make it weaker, but kill it as in make absolutely sure it will never, ever come into existence.

Senator Snowe's trigger is literally a catch-22, defined by Wikipedia as "a set of rules, regulations, procedures, or situations which present the illusion of choice while preventing any real choice."

Since the media gasbags for the most part have all proclaimed the public option DOA, the trigger will be a point they will hammer progressives that go on TV about. It's the Bipartisan Creep for Broderites. I hope any members of the CPC are well informed before they decide to do the Hardball's, CNN or cough, cough....FOX News. The Villagers think they speak for America when they discuss health care reform, but they do not. Americans overwhelmingly support a public option and one that isn't rigged to a phony trigger. Lux warns that this will cause a civil war in the Democratic Party.

The AFL-CIO, Howard Dean and Democracy for America, bloggers, MoveOn.org, progressive media figures, and the tens of thousands of people coming to Obama rallies and cheering wildly for a public option will figure out quickly that this trigger proposal is a farce specifically written to kill any chance of a public option. The Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus already are angry at having legal immigrants thrown under the bus by Baucus, all will explode.

Ya think?

This trigger will never trigger a public option, but I can tell you what it will trigger: a civil war inside the Democratic Party just when you most need unity to pass health care reform. I am convinced that there are deals that can be struck that will bring progressive and moderate Democrats, House and Senate Democrats together on a good strong health care bill that will pass. But a trigger designed to never trigger isn't even close to being one of them.

Rahm seems to be using the trigger to get his backroom deals done with Big Insurance, and he's playing with fire.

No Triggers. Do you hear that, Rahm?

The news has been fast and furious as we approach Labor Day with media outlets trying to out-do each other with "breaking news stories" about what President Obama will or will not support in the health care fight as we enter the the final few innings of this debate.

Administration officials said Wednesday that Mr. Obama would be more specific than he has been to date about what he wants included in the plan. Doing so amounts to an acknowledgment that the president’s prior tactic of laying out broad principles and leaving Congress to fill in the details was no longer working and that Mr. Obama needed to become more personally involved in shaping the outcome.But the officials said Mr. Obama was unlikely to unveil a detailed legislative plan of his own. And they insisted that Mr. Obama had not given up on the provision that has attracted the most fire from the right, a proposal for a government-run competitor to private insurers, although many Democrats say the proposal may eventually be jettisoned.

{}

For now, White House officials said, Mr. Obama remains committed to the goal of insuring all Americans and still prefers to foster competition for insurance companies by creating a new government insurance program, or public option.

Chuck Todd said on MSNBC that the White House was only going to support the Baucus Dogs:

...what Chuck Todd thinks, he just said unequivocally on Andrea Mitchell that the Finance Committee bill is Obama's preferred bill, that it is being done with the cooperation of the White House, and that once it is released, Obama will do everything in his power to pass that bill.

The Politico said that Obama was not backing the public option.

We have been saying all along that the most important part of this debate is not the public option, but rather ensuring choice and competition,” an aide said. “There are lots of different ways to get there.”

And Ed Henry on CNN said yesterday in their big breaking story that the White House was negotiating to get a Snowe job.

Ed Henry: My colleague Dana Bash and I have learned from a source, each one of us, that this White House right now is very quietly in serious conversations with Republican Senator Olympia Snowe, a key moderate.

She is basically the last Republican out of those gang of six senators who have been negotiating, really the last Republican that has an open line to this White House right now.

What we're hearing that she's talking about with White House staff is sort of a scaled-back bill that would focus on insurance reforms that both sides could agree to, but would not have a full public option, instead, would have a so-called trigger. What that means in layman's terms is basically that the insurance companies would have a couple of years to make some dramatic changes.

If they do not make those changes, then a public option would be triggered. So, it would be used down the road. They would hope that this would appease liberals by saying it's not completely off the table. And the big hope is that this could bring along another moderate Republican, like maybe Susan Collins of Maine, some conservative Democrats, like Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu in the Senate, who don't want a public option, but would sort of potentially be open to a trigger like this.

Basically we still don't know what's actually going to happen until the president takes the stage and speaks to the nation and then even after that, the Baucus Dogs still have to release their bill. And then we move on to the next step in the process. This is a massive clusterf*&k, but getting any type of health care reform passed was never going to be easy. We all knew it, I just thought Axelrod's team would have handled it better from the start.

OK, what's the next big breaking story and what will it contradict? I can just see a bunch of WH aides jotting down suggestions and putting them in a shoe box. When a reporter comes sniffing around, they take turns pulling out a piece of paper from the box and passing along their tip. Repeat as often as necessary. Then at night, all the aides go to the bar, get hammered and laugh as it appears in the news.

Sadly, No!

The McCain campaign has apparently decided to spread the notion among Evangelicals that Barack Obama is the Antichrist.

Michael Froomkin: New Low For McCain Campaign: Obama == The Anti-Christ

SoonerG says: McCain's Left Behind Attack

Snoopes has more: Obama as Anti-Christ

This is typical for the McCain campaign. Dog-whistle politics is a common tactic by Rove and Lee Atwater. It's in play now right before your eyes and this time it's targeted at evangelicals.

The Dog-Whistle:

Dog-whistle politics, also known as the use of code words, is a type of political campaigning or speechmaking employing coded language that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has a different or more specific meaning for a targeted subgroup of the audience. The term is usually used pejoratively by those that do not approve of the tactics.

Cliff Schecter and Other Opinionated Talents: Apparently, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama agree about the polarizing effect of the standard GOP tactic of emphasizing cultural controversy over meat and potatos issues.

Beggars Can Be Choosers: Whatever happened to protest music?

All Hat No Cattle: This looks a good place for gunslingers Hillary & Mitt

The Reality-Based Community: Your tax dollars at work

The Carpetbagger Report: Steve Benen's closely guarded secret exposed

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: O Hell Nawl!, Cannibal Planet, Blazing Indiscretions, Beautiful Horizons

On a personal note, I want to congratulate my wife, Candy, and my brother Sean, on the release of their book!