kurtadb

On late nights when I think I am about to spin off the planet, I like to crank this album on my ipad, throw on the earphones, lie back and relax, because it provides the kind of chaos that I need to relax. Just a spectacular album that my brother turned me on to a few years back.

I don’t know why, but audible chaos like this really calms me.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford the press conference to a whole new level:

Local authorities are trying to kick him out of the annual holiday parade, which is valid. But part of me really wants to see his float.

Also on today’s #TWiBRadio, #TeamBlackness wants to move to #TWiBNation 96122, Wagatwe Wanjuki weighs in on the University of Connecticut shaming student victims of violence, and we’re joined by listener and friend of the show Larime Taylor who discussed his graphic novel, A Voice in the Dark, that will be released Nov. 20.

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And this morning on #amTWiB, The Morning Crew discussed Toronto Mayor Rob Ford may be a crackhead but he refuses to leave office, minorities are more optimistic about how education will help their career, and piano music may make you cray.

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(Cross-posted)

Doing a quick read through the New York Times reporting on the Obamacare tweak proposed today and it is basically the Landrieu plan with even less damage to the underlying risk pools of the Exchanges.  Here are the major points:

• Administrative change only
• Health insurers have the option of keeping the old plans in operation (Landrieu required the old plans to stay open)
• No new enrollments, only exisiting members
• Plans would be considered “grandfathered” for mandate purposes if in effect on Oct. 1, 2013. 

Minimal damage to the risk pools, and this is a viable political solution to a political problem.

Domenech is amazed that Obama’s healthcare advantage has disappeared:

President Obama’s signature domestic policy may have accomplished something previously unthinkable: taking an issue where one party had a dominant hold on public opinion, and reversing it in favor of the opposing party. If the latest poll numbers and enrollment figures are to be believed, we could be witnessing a political achievement unequaled in modern political history: the complete demolition of one party’s long-term dominance on an issue area – the Democrats’ ownership of the health care issue – in the space of a few months.

Green remembers the state of affairs last month:

Clearly, the failed rollout of the president’s health-care plan is causing the public to lose faith in him. But let’s remember that congressional Republicans forced the government to shut down, and that it was still shut less than a month ago. Yet today, Americans have more confidence in Republicans’ ability to govern than they do in Obama’s. This is plainly a lesser-of-two-evils situation. But it’s pretty remarkable nonetheless: Republicans haven’t just survived the shutdown, they’ve prospered—at least relative to Obama.

(Chart from Emily Ekins)

He’s one of those slimy, oily, back-slapping, money-grubbing pols that creep me out. He doesn’t even have the Clinton charm. And yet he’s ahead:

Republican Ken Cuccinelli goes into today’s gubernatorial election in Virginia expected to lose to Democrat Terry McAullife, a man who almost missed the birth of a child to attend a fundraiser and once downed shots of Puerto Rican rum on morning television. The Most Quoted Man in Washington, University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato, has summed up the election as two people “running against the only people they could beat”—and Cuccinelli, well, couldn’t.

Why?

His answer:

[Cuccinelli] chose the campaign path that offered the most resistance from 21st-century constituencies. For instance, already vulnerable to suggestions he was overly involved in people’s bedroom activities (he’d sent an volunteer to monitor a George Mason University sex fair and said the state should regulate gay sex), he opted to set up a website to advocate for the restoration of the state’s sodomy law, which was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2003. And critically, given the extension of the franchise to women just 93 years ago, McAuliffe was able to target Cuccinelli for supporting transvaginal ultrasounds for women seeking abortions because Cuccinelli supports transvaginal ultrasounds for women seeking abortions.

Cuccinelli is a reactionary theocon of the Catholic variety, a type gently reprimanded by the current Pope. Par exemple:

“My view is that homosexual acts, not homosexuality, but homosexual acts are wrong. They’re intrinsically wrong. And I think in a natural law based country it’s appropriate to have policies that reflect that. … They don’t comport with natural law. I happen to think that it represents (to put it politely; I need my thesaurus to be polite) behavior that is not healthy to an individual and in aggregate is not healthy to society.”

Myra Adams notes the huge gender divide:

 Women are McAuliffe’s key to victory. According to a recent Washington Post poll, there is not just a gender gap but a gender canyon, with McAuliffe trumping Cuccinelli 58 to 34 percent with women voters. Cuccinelli is opposed to abortion and holds traditional views on gay marriage and contraception. The McAuliffe campaign has successfully labeled him as an extremist.

Enten’s analysis of the race:

McAuliffe’s success has largely depended on Republican candidate Ken Cuccinelli being even more disliked. Sound familiar? It should, because a very similar battle is going on for the 2014 midterms. Democrats are trying to break a stretch of the White House party losing or winning fewer than 10 seats in the House of Representatives – a stretch that dates back to the civil war. They need to take 17 seats to win back the House.

Right now, Democrats are ahead on the national House ballot by about four points among likely 2014 voters. As in Virginia, it’s all about being less ugly. President Obama’s approval rating is bad, but Republican approval ratings are worse. The fact that voters in Virginia are disobeying the longer term election after the presidential race trend should have national Republicans at least somewhat worried.

(Photo: Democratic Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe passes a campaign flyer to three-year-old Ozzie Springer of Centerville, Virginia, as he greets commuters on Election Day November 5, 2013 at Vienna/Fairfax-GMU Metro Station in Fairfax, Virginia. By Alex Wong/Getty Images.)

As our sharper readers might recall, back three years ago there was a small rumble about former Hawkeye legend Acie Earl making a sci-fi movie/series/thing called Moon Zero Three. If you need to re-read that sentence a few more times for it to really sink in, by all means. It took us four tries.

Anyway, it's been a quiet three years since that announcement, and we wouldn't have blamed if you had lost hope on ever seeing Acie Earl fight aliens on the big screen. Fear not, friends: that day is here.

On Wednesday, November 6, the second part of the Moon Zero Three epic will premier at The Mill in Iowa City (of course it's the Mill). The first part is depressingly Earl-free, but it's all been a buildup to momentous things. Here's more from the press release sent to us, a.k.a. the greatest written paragraph in human history:

Earl, former Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year, is among the cast of "Moon Zero Three" a science fiction film made entirely in Iowa City. Acie plays the part of ‘Fasthorse' the powerful rouge nightclub owner who may or may not know all the angles on Moon Zero Three!

And the pictures. My god, the pictures.

Yes.

Yessssssssss.

YESSSSSSS YES YES YES YES.

THAT IS ACIE EARL WITH A SPACE BLASTER GUN

THAT IS A SQUID-SHARK

THAT IS A ROBOT PERSON WITH DIVISION SIGNS ON HIS SUNGLASSES

AND THAT IS A RIGHTEOUS SPACE BLASTER GUN, ACIE EARL

TRAILER TIME.

We need to go to this, right? Let's pack The Mill and let the madness wash over us. When will an opportunity to get this weird come the way of us Hawkeye fans again? Like, ever?

The head of HHS recently brushed off calls for her resignation:

Isaac Chotiner credits the GOP for Sebelius’s job security:

Just imagine for a moment that Obama fired Sebelius and was forced to appoint a new head of the HHS, who would of course need Senate confirmation. This person would almost automatically be labeled the new “Obamacare czar” and would be unlikely to win confirmation unless he or she promised to push for, say, the repeal of Obamacare and the imprisonment of everyone who voted for it. When the Senate goes to unprecedented lengths to block executive branch appointments, it creates a situation where the president is highly unlikely to make personnel changes. Holder undoubtedly remains in his job largely for this reason. Any new appointee for Attorney General would be forced to disown Holder’s record entirely and declare the necessity of investigating what Darrell Issa called ”the most corrupt government in history.”

Earlier Dish on firing Sebelius here and here.

Northwestern played its first football game on February 22, 1876.

Some time later, Pat Fitzgerald drove an imaginary UPS truck:

This has been a complete history of Northwestern football.

Tomasky is highly skeptical that new negotations over the budget can result in any different outcome next time:

The position of the chaos caucus is going to be: Okay Obama, you give us entitlement cuts, and we’ll give you…uh, what? No revenues. They’re inflexible on that point. No programs (outside maybe of defense, and even that’s a maybe) funded at levels above sequestration. So actually, they’ll give nothing.

Beutler’s view:

[T]here’s a high likelihood that these negotiations will end the same way as all the others that preceded them did: no agreement. An agreement is only compatible with the GOP’s anti-tax absolutism if Democrats drop their demand for tax parity and agree to pay down sequestration with other spending cuts. Possible, but unlikely.

One way out of this would be for Obama to go big, to propose in these new talks a Bowles-Simpson-style deal in which major tax reform and entitlement cuts are exchanged for much higher revenues. If the GOP were a genuinely conservative party, actually interested in long-term government solvency and reform within our current system of government, they would jump at this. They could claim to have reduced tax rates, even if the net result were higher taxes. And the brutal fact is that, given simply our demographics, higher taxes are going to be necessary if we are to avoid gutting our commitments to the seniors of tomorrow. They could concede that and climb down from this impossibly long limb they have constructed for themselves.

I’ve long favored a Grand Bargain, but recognize its huge political liabilities without the leadership of both parties genuinely wanting to get there. But for Obama, it seems to me, re-stating such a possibility and embracing it more than he has ever done, is a win-win.

He may alienate Democrats – but after his cold-steel resistance to Tea Party blackmail, he has surely won some chips to his left. With independents and moderate Republicans, now reeling from the last month’s brinksmanship, it would signal centrist leadership that could bolster his political standing, even if the GOP turns him down. If his political standing improves, then the chances for a Democratic wave in 2014 increase.

But it means taking a real risk now. And this president has shown in his second term a much greater propensity to risk than in his first.

Think of the boldness of his response to Assad’s chemical weapons attack and agility in roping in Putin to deal with it (so far successfully). Think of his steadfast refusal to budge right up against the threat of default. He has earned new cred and could bolster it some more with a new, bold reach for the political center he can still represent. I believe it would be the most politically effective domestic policy agenda the president can plausibly move forward, if the GOP maintains its rigidity against immigration reform past the next Congressional elections. It would also help bring back the core coalition that gave him such a huge victory in 2008. It would mean the president has not given up on the long-term fiscal health of the country. And it is vital that no president gives up on that, especially one elected on the principle of hope as well as change.

Resignation to gridlock is perfectly rational. But changing that dynamic is never impossible. It’s what we elect presidents to do. And this one still could, if he swiftly exploits the opening this near-catastrophe has presented to him.

(Photo: U.S. President Barack Obama makes a statement at the State Dining Room of the White House October 17, 2013 in Washington, DC. Obama said the American people are completely fed up with Washington and called on cooperation to work things out. By Alex Wong/Getty Images.)

Via BoingBoing, I came across a clip in which the Stephen Fry demonstrates how to get an idiot to hoist himself on his own petard:

Praise Jesus, Bieber, and Allah, John Boehner will retain his speakership by pushing out the turd more-or-less described by Benen yesterday instead of bringing any Senate bill to the floor, because that might be a compromise.

So, Boehner and the leadership may escape today w/ a passed House plan. Looming unanswered Q: is that House's final play?

— Robert Costa (@robertcostaNRO) October 15, 2013

RT @jwpetersNYT Issa says House Rs opened their meeting by singing "Amazing Grace" this morning. Are unified behind their new plan.

— Robert Costa (@robertcostaNRO) October 15, 2013

Sufjan Stevens has posted an interesting comment on Miley Cyrus's "Get It Right". You should go read it on his blog, but since I've noticed that LL commenters often don't follow links, here's the text:

Dear Miley. I can’t stop listening to #GetItRight (great song, great message, great body), but maybe you need a quick grammar lesson. One particular line causes concern: “I been laying in this bed all night long.” Miley, technically speaking, you’ve been LYING, not LAYING, an irregular verb form that should only be used when there’s an object, i.e. “I been laying my tired booty on this bed all night long.” Whatever. I’m not the best lyricist, but you know what I mean. #Get It Right The Next Time. But don’t worry, even Faulkner messed it up. We all make mistakes, and surely this isn’t your worst misdemeanor. But also, Miley, did you know the tense here is also totally wrong. Surely you’ve heard of Present Perfect Continuous Tense (I HAVE BEEN LYING in this bed all night long [hopefully getting some beauty sleep?]). It’s a weird, equivocal, almost purgatorial tense, not quite present, not quite past, not quite here, not quite there. Somewhere in between. I feel that way all the time. It kind of sucks. But I have a feeling your “present perfect continuous” involves a lot more excitement than mine. Anyway, doesn’t that also sum up your career right now? Present. Perfect. Continuous. And Tense. Intense? Girl, you work it like Mike Tyson. Miley, I love you because you’re the Queen, grammatically and anatomically speaking. And you’re the hottest cake in the pan. Don’t ever grow old. Live brightly before your fire fades into total darkness. XXOO Sufjan

If you're still confused about lying and laying, Geoff Pullum has some disastrously unhelpful guidance. And if you're wondering about the grammatical (as opposed to metaphorical) "present perfect continuous tense" business, Arnold Zwicky's discussion of extended senses of the word tense may be useful.

Douthat asks:

From RedState to Heritage to all the various pro-shutdown voices in the House, nobody-but-nobody has sketched out a remotely plausible scenario in which a continued government shutdown leads to any meaningful, worth-the-fighting-for concessions on Obamacare — or to anything, really, save gradually-building pain for the few House Republicans who actually have to fight to win re-election in 2014, and the ratification of the public’s pre-existing sense that the G.O.P. can’t really be trusted with the reins of government.

Sure, the polling could be worse. Sure, assuming cooler heads ultimately prevail, it’s not likely to be an irrecoverable disaster. But something can be less than a disaster and still not make a lick of sense. And that’s what we have here: A case study, for the right’s populists, in how all the good ideas and sound impulses in the world don’t matter if you decide to fight on ground where you simply cannot win.

Friedersdorf largely blames right-wing media for encouraging short-term thinking:

Watch Sean Hannity. Listen to Rush Limbaugh.

Watch Sean Hannity. Listen to Rush Limbaugh. With few exceptions, the focus is winning whatever fight happens to be dominating the current news cycle. Each fight is treated as if it is as maximally significant as any other, and that is no coincidence. If you’re driven by partisan tribalism more than ideology, if getting in rhetorical digs at liberals thrills you more than persuading adversaries or achieving policy victories, it makes sense that you would fight substantively inconsequential battles with no more or less vigor than any other.

Galupo imagines what a functional Republican party might have achieved:

There is a deal to be had now that Obamacare is again on the backburner and a short-term debt ceiling increase is apparently in play. The mismatch of demands and leverage points is coming back into balance. And so we’re left to wonder what House Republicans could have accomplished had they retained a sense of proportion and sought reasonable concessions without attempting to seize the highest-value hostage. A repeal of the medical device tax, plus sequester-level budget caps? The Keystone pipeline? More?

I have to say that after all this huffing and puffing and threatening to blow our house down, the idea of repealing a medical device tax as the final denouement has a certain element of bathos to it, don’t you think? You nearly destroyed the entire world economy for lower taxes on stethoscopes? Alrighty then …

Indiana University law professor Gerard Magliocca has an excellent Washington Post column on why the Supreme Court’s decision largely upholding the constitutionality of Obamacare may not be fully “settled law”:

The Affordable Care Act was passed by Congress, signed by President Obama, upheld by the Supreme Court and reconfirmed by the president’s reelection. Many of its provisions have gone into effect. As Democrats have taken to saying, it is the law of the land.

But contrary to what the president suggested in the Rose Garden this past week, that does not mean Obamacare is “settled, and it is here to stay.” And it is not illegitimate for Republicans to use every lawful means at their disposal to stand in its way…

Lawyers use the term “settled law” to describe court decisions that clearly establish a rule or a doctrine. Yet settled law also refers to legal actions that are accepted by society. Consider two of the most famous Supreme Court decisions: Brown v. Board of Education, which desegregated public schools, and Roe v. Wade, which created the constitutional right to have an abortion. Both of these cases are “the law of the land.” They are binding on all courts in the United States. Only one of them, though, is settled in the broader sense of that phrase. It is perfectly acceptable for politicians, judges and ordinary citizens to attack Roe and call on the Supreme Court to overturn it. It is totally unacceptable to criticize Brown in 2013.

A statute or court opinion becomes settled law when there is a broad consensus that it is just.

Gerard enumerates a wide range of reasons why the Supreme Court’s ruling in NFIB v. Sebelius falls short of being fully settled. But the core insight is that there is no bipartisan or cross-ideological consensus about its correctness. If the balance of power on the Supreme Court shifts even slightly, it could easily be narrowed or overruled.

I would add that NFIB is also unsettled because there is deep disagreement about it among judges, scholars, and other legal elites. As far back as 2009, there was on expert consensus about the constitutionality of the Obamacare individual health insurance mandate and there is at least as much elite disagreement on the subject today as there was then, if not more. The closely divided 5-4 nature of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the case is just one indication of the lack of consensus. Moreover, the key swing voter – Chief Justice Roberts – actually accepted most of the case against the mandate, and “saved” it from invalidation only by significantly rewriting it. Sometimes, a decision reviled by many in the general public can nonetheless become firmly established because legal elites overwhelmingly support it. This is how some of the controversial Warren Court rulings of the 1960s eventually became untouchable. But, so far at least, nothing of the kind has happened with NFIB v. Sebelius.

NFIB is far from the only case that is unsettled in this sense. Gerard notes the parallel example of Roe v. Wade. I would add cases like Kelo v. City of New London (another close 5-4 decision reviled by much of the general public, and a substantial number of legal elites), Citizens United (hated by most liberals, including legal elites), and the Court’s decisions striking down various affirmative action programs (ditto). Each of these precedents remains vulnerable to attack because they are hated by much of the general public, and influential legal elites believe they should be overruled or at least severely narrowed.

Justice Robert Jackson famously said that the Supreme Court is “not final because we are infallible, but… infallible only because we are final.” Sometimes, however, their decisions aren’t completely final either.

UPDATE: I should emphasize that I am not saying that lack of consensus about its correctness necessarily proves that the Obamacare decision was wrong. A Supreme Court ruling can be right despite the fact that it attracts widespread opposition, or wrong despite the fact that nearly everyone agrees with it. As Gerard notes in his article, lack of settled status also does not entitle lower courts to disobey a Supreme Court decision. However, the a widely disputed ruling has a different status in our political and legal culture from one that commands broad support, and is much more likely to be narrowed or overturned in the future.

YouGov’s latest:

The latest research from YouGov, conducted in the first two days of the shutdown, shows that half (50%) of Americans blame Republicans in Congress for the continuing shutdown. 11% blame Democrats in Congress while 29% blame President Obama for not ending the shutdown. This divides along partisan lines, with Democrats tending to blame Republicans and Republicans tending to blame the President or Democrats. Independents, however, are largely split, with 41% blaming Republicans in Congress and 33% blaming the President.

I’d find the narrow split among Independents unnerving, if I were the president. 33 percent blame the president for the shutdown and impasse? Given that he has already conceded sequester-level spending, and has cut the deficit in the last three years by the swiftest amount since the end of the Second World War, what else do they want him to do? If he were to abandon his signature domestic achievement after re-election, because of blackmail, we might as well give up on elections and representative government altogether. All round, this does not seem to me as a battle either side will “win” as such. Right now, as Harry Enten notes in a review of the polls, “no side is winning, one side is just losing by less”:

More Americans disapprove than approve of the job being done by all three actors in the dispute over the federal budget. President Obama comes out “ahead” in the ABC News/Washington Post poll with a -9pt approval rating. Both parties in Congress are much lower. Democrats in Congress manage to maintain a net approval of -22pt, while Republicans in Congress fall to a -37pt approval rating. These are all awful. …

A new CNN/ORC poll puts the net favorability rating of the Democratic party at -9pt: its lowest since CNN started asking the question in 2006. Republicans, too, are at their lowest level since 2006 as well, with -30pt favorability. A large portion of the difference between the parties’ favorability is that Tea Party supporters are less likely to hold a favorable view of Republicans than Tea Party opponents are of Democrats.

Meanwhile, Weigel highlights a Fox News poll with some bad numbers for Republicans. This one – compared with the last Fox News poll – stood out to me:

A tumble in the GOP’s favorable rating to 35–59, with 59 percent unfavorable marking the highest level in the history of the poll.

Of course that just might be the Tea Partiers frustrated that the GOP isn’t being radical enough in bringing the government and the economy into collapse.

Beutler spells it out:

The whole point of Obama’s refusal to negotiate is that what Republicans are actually demanding is to fundamentally alter the power balance between the legislative and executive branches of government. If Obama caves and offers concessions to Republicans in exchange for a debt limit increase, it will clearly weaken the presidency. By contrast, if Republicans “cave” and increase the debt limit cleanly, Congress will lose none of its fundamental power.

Moreover, senior administration officials are confident that if Obama establishes the precedent that the president should yield concessions to the opposition on a threat of default, eventually the opposition will demand something so impossible that a default will happen anyhow. Taking a hard line now is the only way to prevent that.

A more concise description of Obama’s thinking:

[I]t would be a complete abdication, in [Obama's] mind, to leave the next president vulnerable to the nullification of his or her election.

Yes, that is indeed where we are: nullification again.

“For better or worse, it’s here,” the photographer Danny Wilcox Frazier told me, during a week in which speculation about Hillary Clinton’s prospective run for President in 2016 peppered the news. “The dust has barely settled from the 2012 Presidential race, and Iowa Democrats are back at it.”

Frazier photographed some of the thirteen hundred Iowans who attended the Harkin Steak Fry, an annual event that has, through the years, featured most Democrats with Presidential aspirations. This year’s attendees got their first official look at San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro, but the event’s star attraction was Vice-President Joe Biden—an appearance that did little to quell speculation that Obama’s No. 2 is eying a spot in 2016. “The gathering was a mix of farmers in cowboy hats, a retired truck driver, academics, union members, and a grandmother who brought her teen-age grandchildren,” Frazier said.

Here’s a look. Click on the red arrows for a full-screen view.

Photographs by Danny Wilcox Frazier/Redux

Cody Wilson is a twenty-five-year-old former law student at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also the inventor of the Liberator, a gun made almost entirely from plastic pieces created with a 3-D printer; he uploaded to the Internet a blueprint that anyone could use to print such a gun.

Wilson, who espouses libertarian views, created the blueprint to make a point: information should be free. Not everyone agreed with him. In May, after Wilson successfully fired the gun at a range near Austin and posted the design online, the State Department requested that those files be removed from the Web site of his nonprofit, Defense Distributed.

Wilson complied—but not before the files had been downloaded two hundred thousand times, igniting a debate about whether there should be limits to the free flow of information over the Internet, and over the role of the government in enforcing those restrictions.

I’ve got C-SPAN on, and Inhofe is giving Cruz a few minutes of rest by reading letters from wingnut constituents asking how anyone will have privacy after Obamacare is put into effect because apparently buying insurance from a private company gives all your information to the government. Also, Obamacare is by itself responsible for employers keeping people from working 40 hours a week (which is just their latest excuse, but that’s been going on for a long time for other reasons.)  So how is this playing at home?

Above is the Dallas Morning News headline. Cruz’ talk is front paged, but it’s not being called a filibuster. I had to search the Houston Chronicle, which is as much a hometown paper as it can be for a Canadian-born guy whose real name is Rafael, but I finally found this:

That comparison has got to sting both for Cruz and for Davis. Finally, Cruz’ real hometown paper, the Washington Post:

Calling Cruz’ speech an attack on Obamacare is throwing him a bit of a bone, since he’s making his stand in the debate about a bill that actually does defund Obamacare, but even the Post didn’t use the “f-word”.

Josh Jones captions the above video:

[It] profiles a very popular experiment at London’s Globe Theatre, the 1994 reconstruction of Shakespeare’s theatrical home. As linguist David Crystal explains, the theater’s purpose has always been to recapture as much as possible the original look and feel of a Shakespearean production—costuming, music, movement, etc. But until recently, the Globe felt that attempting a play in the original pronunciation would alienate audiences. The opposite proved to be true, and people clamored for more. Above, Crystal and his son, actor Ben Crystal, demonstrate to us what certain Shakespearean passages would have sounded like to their first audiences, and in so doing draw out some subtle wordplay that gets lost on modern tongues.

“In Buenos Aires I used to receive letters from homosexual persons who are ‘socially wounded’ because they tell me that they feel like the church has always condemned them,” Pope Francis said in a long, occasionally mesmerizing interview with Father Antonio Spadaro that was published Thursday by sixteen Jesuit journals, in a range of languages. (The English version is in America.) “But the church does not want to do this.” He had just told Spadaro that wounds were what the Church was meant to heal: “I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds.”

And yet the Church “sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules.” And then, in a passage that will probably always be associated with his papacy, he went on to make clear what he considered small, or smaller-minded:

The United States has qualified for the 2014 World Cup with two matches to spare and despite speculation that Jurgen Klinsmann would call in an inexperienced and experimental squad for the Americans' final two qualifiers, he says that will not be the case. The U.S. manager has said that the they are going to "bring in the best players" for their qualifiers against Jamaica and Panama on October 11 and 15 because "we owe it to the fans."

CONCACAF announces start time for USA-Panama

All three matches on the final day of CONCACAF qualifying will begin at the same time

"Definitely for our last two qualifiers against Jamaica and Panama, our approach is six points," Klinsmann said. "We want to win these two games badly, and we are going to bring in the best players. We are going to bring in everyone that is available and finish this qualifying campaign on the highest note possible."

The matches could also be used as a chance to cap-tie some players, most notable John Anthony Brooks. Because they are qualifiers, anyone who plays in each match will not be allowed to play for any country other than the U.S. ever again. With a 20-year-old dual-national like Brooks who has been excellent for Hertha Berlin in the early part of the season, locking him into the U.S. team and taking away the Germany option would be a big boost.

In addition to cap-tying players and, generally, the desire to win every match possible for the sake of a winning culture, wins over Jamaica and Panama could help the Americans' slim chances at a World Cup seed. It's tough to imagine them moving into the top seven of the FIFA rankings (or top eight, if Brazil also move into the top eight), but it is not impossible. FIFA also hasn't confirmed that they will use their rankings to seed teams for the World Cup either -- in typical FIFA fashion, their method won't be determined until just before the draw -- so if they decide to add another variable into the seeding process, it's possible that moving from No. 13 to No. 10 or so might be enough to earn the Americans a spot in Pot 1 for the draw.

And then there are the fans. Klinsmann believes that the fans deserve to see the best U.S. team possible, or at least that's what he says. Whether that is really a motivator for Klinsmann or just a good sound bite -- and it is a very good sound bite -- is irrelevant because the fans who show up in Kansas City to see the U.S. take on Jamaica on October 11 are going to see the first choice American team.

"We owe that to the fans," the U.S. manager explain. "Kansas City is sold out. Our fans are coming from so many different places in the United States – in Columbus, fans came from 48 states - so we owe them a real good game. Therefore, everybody that is fit and healthy and belongs in that group will be there."

The focus of Klinsmann's comments are on the match in Kansas City and not in Panama City, which could hint at a very different team taking on the Canaleros than the one that faces the Reggae Boyz. Without fans to appease, Klinsmann may feel less obligated to play his best team against Panama, and frankly, it would be wise not to.

Any suspensions incurred against Panama, be they red cards or yellow cards that hit the accumulation threshold for suspension carry over to the World Cup and will see that player out for the Americans' first match in Brazil. That isn't worth risking, and there isn't going to be a stadium full of Americans that are owed the best U.S. team possible for that contest either. That a U.S. loss to Panama hurts Mexico's chances of making the World Cup will probably easy the pain of any American fans too.

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There are many ways to measure one’s legacy, but in my opinion one of the best is by how many people name children after you. Shaquille O’Neal’s ultimate mark on humanity isn’t his four NBA championship rings, his two scoring titles, the critically-acclaimed rap album “Shaq Diesel”, or defeating Charles Barkley in the world’s first and only five-hole golf match. It’s the amount of college-aged kids currently named Shaquille or some derivative.

We are in the midst of the Shaq Boom. Based on the number of college basketball players that participated in at least 10% of their team’s minutes, I have quantified that trend here.

  Year Shaqs
0-1989   0*
  1990   1*
  1991   1*
  1992   1*
  1993   0*
  1994   0*
  1995   0*
  1996   0*
  1997   0*
  1998   0*
  1999   0*
  2000   0*
  2001   0*
  2002   0*
  2003   0*
  2004   0*
  2005   0
  2006   0
  2007   0
  2008   0
  2009   1
  2010   1
  2011   2
  2012   6
  2013  11

*Figures estimated

Marshall’s Shaquille Johnson represents the lone Shaq in ‘09 and ‘10. His bio indicates he was born on April 11, 1990. That would have been just after the completion of O’Neal’s freshman season at LSU, where the original Shaq posted nice numbers, but nothing like the historic figures he would produce in his sophomore and junior seasons. Nonetheless, it was widely considered he’d have a successful NBA career by then and Johnson’s parents were part of the earliest users of the name. The current crop of Shaqs was born later in O’Neal’s college career or in his rookie NBA season. Shaq had become a household name even among casual sports fans by then.

But very quickly it became lame to name your kid Shaq. According to the Social Security Administration, here’s where Shaquille ranked among the most popular baby names in the U.S. by year.

Year  Shaq Rank
1990   >1000
1991     720
1992     426
1993     181
1994     234
1995     458
1996     662
1997   >1000

Shaq dropped out of the top 1000 in 1997, never to appear again. Based on this information, it appears the number of Shaqs should peak this season or next, and by 2019 we may be completely Shaq-free again. That will give way to the Kobe Generation, and Bryant’s first name has oddly had much more staying power.

Kobe first appeared in the nation’s top 1000 in 1997, spanning the end of his rookie season and the beginning of his second season, and it’s stayed there every year since. The name’s popularity broadly peaked between 1998 and 2003, where all but one year was spent in the top 300. In 2012, it still ranked 506th. Parents may admire Bryant’s team loyalty or use of cutting-edge medical technology.

We can never know those reasons for sure, but we can say that since 1997, Kobe has been the name of choice for parents opting to name their children after basketball players. (Lebron has yet to crack the top 1000.) From this we can be confident we’ll see the first-ever college basketball player named Kobe sometime in the 2016 to 2018 seasons. And while the supply of Shaqs will peter out right quick, Kobe’s name will be appearing on college basketball rosters well into the 2030’s. Kobe Bryant may have skipped college, but Kobe will be playing college basketball for many, many, many years to come.

[Update: Turns out the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective beat me by about 16 months on this. Here was their take on the phenomenon.]

“Had we rolled out something that was very smooth and disciplined and linear, they would have graded it well, even if it was a disastrous policy. We know that, because that’s exactly how they graded the Iraq war,” – president Obama.

Oh, snap!

It’s been awesome to watch today as all the jerking knees quieted a little and all the instant judgments of the past month ceded to a deeper acknowledgment (even among Republicans) of what had actually been substantively achieved: something that, if it pans out, might be truly called a breakthrough – not just in terms of Syria, but also in terms of a better international system, and in terms of Iran.

Obama has managed to insist on his red line on Syria’s chemical weapons, forcing the world to grapple with a new breach of international law, while also avoiding being dragged into Syria’s civil war. But he has also strengthened the impression that he will risk a great deal to stop the advance of WMDs (which presumably includes Iran’s nukes). After all, his announcement of an intent to strike Assad was a real risk to him and to the US. Now, there’s a chance that he can use that basic understanding of his Syria policy – and existing agreement on chemical weapons – to forge a potential grand bargain with Iran’s regime. If that is the eventual end-game, it would be historic.

To put it plainly: Syria is the proof of principle for an agreement with Iran. And an agreement with Iran – that keeps its nuclear program reliably civil and lifts sanctions – is the Holy Grail for this administration, and for American foreign policy in the 21st Century.

As for the role of Putin, I argued last week that it was the Russian leader who had blinked, the Russian leader who had agreed to enforce Washington’s policy, and that the best response was to welcome it with open arms. So it was another treat to hear the president say, in tones that are unmistakable:

“I welcome him being involved. I welcome him saying, ‘I will take responsibility for pushing my client, the Assad regime, to deal with these chemical weapons.’ ”

Meep meep.

(Photo: President Barack Obama in the Oval Office on September 13, 2013. By Dennis Brack-Pool/Getty Images.)

Aging before your eyes:

Christopher Jobson explains how the incredible video was made:

Last Thanksgiving, [filmmaker Anthony Cerniello] traveled to his friend Danielle’s family reunion and with still photographer Keith Sirchio shot portraits of her youngest cousins through to her oldest relatives with a Hasselblad medium format camera. Then began the process of scanning each photo with a drum scanner at the U.N. in New York, at which point he carefully edited the photos to select the family members that had the most similar bone structure. Next he brought on animators Nathan Meier and Edmund Earle who worked in After Effects and 3D Studio Max to morph and animate the still photos to make them lifelike as possible. Finally, Nuke (a kind of 3D visual effects software) artist George Cuddy was brought on to smooth out some small details like the eyes and hair.

Twenty-one years ago this month, on September 6, 1992, the decomposed body of Christopher McCandless was discovered by moose hunters just outside the northern boundary of Denali National Park. He had died inside a rusting bus that served as a makeshift shelter for trappers, dog mushers, and other backcountry visitors. Taped to the door was a note scrawled on a page torn from a novel by Nikolai Gogol:

ATTENTION POSSIBLE VISITORS.
S.O.S.
I NEED YOUR HELP. I AM INJURED, NEAR DEATH, AND TOO WEAK TO HIKE OUT OF HERE. I AM ALL ALONE, THIS IS NO JOKE. IN THE NAME OF GOD, PLEASE REMAIN TO SAVE ME. I AM OUT COLLECTING BERRIES CLOSE BY AND SHALL RETURN THIS EVENING. THANK YOU,
CHRIS McCANDLESS
AUGUST ?

From a cryptic diary found among his possessions, it appeared that McCandless had been dead for nineteen days. A driver’s license issued eight months before he perished indicated that he was twenty-four years old and weighed a hundred and forty pounds. After his body was flown out of the wilderness, an autopsy determined that it weighed sixty-seven pounds and lacked discernible subcutaneous fat. The probable cause of death, according to the coroner’s report, was starvation.

A reader writes:

You wrote: “If only such an offer had been possible in Iraq in 2003.”

Not only was it possible but it actually happened. I’m astonished at how many people forget that In late 2002 Saddam Hussein, in a letter to Hans Blix, invited UN weapons inspectors back into the country. I remember thinking at the time that we didn’t have to go to war and that this had been all brilliantly played by the Bush administration. This turned out to be quite a naive thought.

Then we went to war anyway.

If Obama exercises restraint here, then we have insight into how he would have handled Iraq in 2003 and it would have been taking yes for an answer when Saddam Hussein capitulated.

I stand corrected.