Lean Left

Maybe:

Democrats on a key Senate Committee outlined a revised and far less costly health care plan Wednesday night that includes a government-run insurance option and an annual fee on employers who do not offer coverage to their workers.

The plan carries a 10-year price tag of slightly over $600 billion, and would lead toward an estimated 97 percent of all Americans having coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and Chris Dodd said in a letter to other members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The AP obtained a copy.

By contrast, an earlier, incomplete proposal carried a price tag of roughly $1 trillion and would have left millions uninsured, CBO analysts said in mid-June.

So, with the more progressive plan, we can cover 97% of the country for less than the bank bailouts and keep the current system of employment based insurance (this is not something I care about, but it does allow people to keep their current plans.) The “moderate” plan cost 1.6 trillion dollars and did not provide a real choice for people.

Now, the details will be important. It sounds like companies might be allowed to drop employees and just pay a 750 dollar fine per employee per year. The AP says that provision will work to prevent companies from dropping employees, but I don’t see how. The subsidies for people who cannot afford insurnce are important, as well s the details of the public plan. The TNR health blog likes the plan, but seems to think that the public plan would be state based, something that scares me. But t the end of the day, this appears to be a giant step in the right direction and a strong rebuke to the so-called moderates who would charge more for much less in defense of insurance company monopolies.

It appears that Kennedy, the old liberal lion of the Senate, had at least one more roar in him.

EDIT:

Looks like a national plan, so the bargaining power and thus the full benefit of the plan remain in place.

Despite the fact that my Brewers are in first place to start July, I can’t shake the feeling that they’re just not a very good team. In fact, to borrow a phrase, I think they’re probably the worst team in the NL Central, except for all the other ones. That said, the divisional pecking order should start to sort itself out over the next three weeks. In that span, the Brewers play 17 games, 14 of them against divisional rivals, including four at the Cubs (currently 3.5 games back), three hosting the Cardinals (1 game back), four at Cincinnati (3 games back). During the same span, the Cardinals play 12 games total against division rivals, all on the road: 3 each at Cincinnati, at Milwaukee, at Chicago, and at Houston.

Now it’s possible that these teams will just beat up on each other and resolve little. In fact, that wouldn’t surprise me at all. But I can’t shake the feeling that one or two teams are going to fall off the map a little bit. The Brewers, Cubs, and Reds all have that kind of fade potential. And don’t forget the Astros: they’ve been quietly sneaking up on everyone in the division.

Anyway, it should be an interesting few weeks of baseball.

P.S. Note to the Brewers: When your pitching staff gives up 1 run on 5 hits at home, you really ought to win that game. Payback for what we did to the Cards’ pitchers earlier in the year, I guess.

…who will take care of your pets?

Problem solved!

Over at Secret Lives of Scientists, friend-of-the-blog Shoothouse Barbie shits purple nickels over an FDA panel’s recommendation to revise the guidelines for acetaminophen (aka Tylenol) and related products. While she was at it, she ranted against the 2004 ban of ephedra in dietary supplements. This has led to a, how do you say, spirited debate betwixt the two of us, in which I suspect there’s a whole lot of talking past one another going on. After a back-and-forth exchange that has gradually moved back in the general direction of civility, I’m still not exactly sure just what her bag is, as her opinions on the matter haven’t exactly struck me as being particularly internally consistent.

Meanwhile, Vinny takes CNBC to taks for one of their talking heads’ similar rant.

Anyway, go forth and check it out, and feel free to jump in.

Utterly cool geek-project: the Galileoscope! 2009 is the official “International Year of Astronomy”. In support, the International Astronomical Union (major professional organization for astronomers) has designed and manufactured super-low-cost small refractor telescopes similar to Galileo’s original (but corrected for chromatic aberration - so even better!), for wide distribution to encourage interest in astronomy. The ’scopes are designed to be assemblable and usable by young children, but are more-than-decent quality. They have cheap but well-designed plastic tubes and good multi-element lenses - they’re not the crap spyglass ’scopes you find in toy stores. (Though, to be sure, there’s a limit to what you can expect from them.) They even have tripod mounts.

Cool thing is, you can not only buy one for yourself for $15 plus shipping, but you can also donate one at $12.50 and free shipping; IAU will bundle the donated ’scopes up and distribute them to places that can put them to good use, especially schools and third-world communities.

Great program. Great price. Check it out.

Herbert asks the most important question:

No one seems to know how old Mohammed Jawad was when he was seized by Afghan forces in Kabul six and a half years ago and turned over to American custody. Some reports say he was 14. Some say 16. The Afghan government believes he was 12.

… The treatment of the young captive was so egregious that the decorated U.S. Army officer assigned to prosecute him — a man gung-ho to secure a conviction against a defendant he believed had committed a serious crime against the American military — ended up removing himself from the case and declaring that he could no longer “in good conscience” participate in the military commissions set up to try accused terrorists.

… In a sworn affidavit, Colonel Vandeveld said, “This abuse included the slapping of Mr. Jawad across the face while Mr. Jawad’s head was covered with a hood, as well as Mr. Jawad’s having been shoved down a stairwell while both hooded and shackled.”

Jawad’s account had the ring of truth. As Colonel Vandeveld said in the affidavit, the interviewer “later testified as a defense witness … that Mr. Jawad’s statement was completely consistent with the statements of other prisoners held at Bagram at the time and, more importantly, that dozens of the guards had admitted to abusing the prisoners in exactly the way described by Jawad.”

Proud of that, are you? Proud of the US torturing children and then keeping them locked away forever? Is that your idea of strength? Is that your idea of justice and the American way? If it is, then know yourself for the thumb-sucking, wetting-yourself coward that you most certainly are. Anyone who justify that kind of treatment is a coward, so afraid of the bogeymen they have built up in their own mind that they are willing to throw away American prestige, the rule of law, common sense and basic human decent. Bin Laden has already beaten those people. The Obama Administration should know better than to listen to them.

When you become a monster fight a monster, all you get is another monster.

GOP senators seem to think that a public health insurance option would be unfair competition. But how can we take that concern seriously when so few insurance companies actually face any competition at all?

Defenders of the status quo on health care like to point out that a public option will destroy the system of robust free-market competition that currently exists.
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), speaking earlier this month on Fox News, called President Obama’s plan the “first step in destroying the best health care system the world has ever known.” A public option, Shelby added, would “destroy the marketplace for health care.”

But the notion that most American consumers enjoy anything like a competitive marketplace for health care is flatly false. And a study issued last month by a pro-reform group makes that strikingly clear.

The report, released by Health Care for America Now (HCAN), uses data compiled by the American Medical Association to show that 94 percent of the country’s insurance markets are defined as “highly concentrated,” according to Justice Department guidelines. Predictably, that’s led to skyrocketing costs for patients, and monster profits for the big health insurers. Premiums have gone up over the past six years by more than 87 percent, on average, while profits at ten of the largest publicly traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007.

Part of me wonders why the Obama Administration doesn’t ask the DOJ anti-trust lawyers to look into these situations. It might be because the anti-trust law is now so weak that these monopolies and near-monopolies are not actually illegal. It might be that the Obama Administration sees that moves as a kind of nuclear option. It might be that the move would be counter-productive.

One of the surest ways for an insurance company to remain profitable is to become as large as possible. Now, this is obviously true of almost every business, but it is exceptionally true in the insurance business. Insurance companies can keep costs down and thus profits up by denying care, by becoming more efficient, by spreading risk and by negotiating lower costs. Becoming huge is a massive advantage in all but the first option. The last, in particular, is critical: insurance companies do best either when they can guarantee that their clients will not use the services. Short of a crystal ball, one of the best ways to get to that point is to have a large enough pool of clients that the odds are the mass will pay in more than they take out in services. So if you break these companies into smaller units, you might have the effect of driving prices even higher.

A health insurance market, then, might not be possible absent a real public option. Because of the odd requirements of an insurance market, it may not be possible for real competition to exist without a government plan and thus impossible for the market to do anything but exacerbate and already bad situation. In order to have a market in health insurance, then, we may need quite a bit of government participation.

Vinny:

anecdotal evidence : evidence that supports the other guy’s position

Ha!

By the way, if you’re not, you really should be reading Vinny’s blog. He blogs sporadically (not that we have much room to talk), but when he does, it’s almost always worth reading. Vinny, if you’re seeing this plug, please consider this a formal request for you to revive your “CNBC Dumbass of the Day” series.

I hope Bob Corker enjoyed his fifteen minutes of fame, becasue it seems like it might have cost his constituents some good jobs:

DETROIT — General Motors is expected to announce as soon as Friday that it will reverse plans to close two plants near Detroit after Michigan won a three-state battle to be the site where G.M. will build a new small car.

G.M. chose to make the car at its Orion Township assembly plant, which was scheduled to close in September, over plants in Janesville, Wis., and Spring Hill, Tenn., a person with knowledge with the decision said Thursday.

A metal-stamping plant about five miles away from Orion in the city of Pontiac will stay open to supply the Orion plant. The two plants employ about 5,000 people.

Remember when the auto industry went to the Bush Administration and asked for help because the entire economy had melted down and no one was buying cars? Remember how Corker demanded the executives and workers take significant penalties to get even a smidgen of help? And remember when Corker voted for the wall Street bailout — a bailout more than ten times the size of the auto industry bailout — that included precisely zero restriction or penalties for Wall Street bankers? Well, it certainly seems like people at GM do.

The Obama Administration looks as if it is heading down the same destructive path as the Bush Administration when it comes to Gitmo prisoners:

Obama administration officials, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, are crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.

Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that an order, which would bypass Congress, could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.

… The other half of the cases, the officials said, present the greatest difficulty because these detainees cannot be prosecuted in federal court or military commissions. In many cases the evidence against them is classified, has been provided by foreign intelligence services or has been tainted by the Bush administration’s use of harsh interrogation techniques.

I realize that the Obama Administration is in a very difficult position. In many cases, the Bush Administration tortured and otherwise abused these people. Trying them may be impossible with that evidence — since, obviously, evidence obtained under torture is of exactly the same quality as the evidence provided in Soviet show trials. That does not excuse the Obama Administration’s rumored plans. Hilzoy says it better than I:

I also don’t envy him the politics of it. Obviously, if some released detainee commits an act of terror against the US, all hell will break loose. And the costs of that will not be purely political: people might not get health insurance, or we might be unable to act on global warming, if some released detainee decides to blow himself up in an American city. I wish that my fellow citizens were also moved by the wrongness of keeping people who might be innocent locked up without recourse, but apparently not enough of them are.

But that doesn’t make it right. Obama does not have to do this. The rule of law is one of our most basic values. It underwrites the freedoms that we go on and on about, but are apparently unwilling to risk much of anything to preserve.

Shame on him if he does this. And shame on us.

There must be another option aside from the destruction of the presumption of innocence and the Great Writ. I haven’t heard, for example, why these people cannot be held as prisoners of war. In any case, no matter how difficult it is, no matter how deeply Bush and Cheney poisoned the process, it is the Obama Administration’s responsibility to find a way out of Bush’s mess without jettisoning the rule of law.

I don’t care if the task is hard. They knew, or should have known, it would be hard going in. If they didn’t want this responsibility, they shouldn’t have taken the job.

Krugman makes some astute observations:

First of all, there’s a difference in what bothers them. When a liberal politician engages in sexual betrayal, what bothers his erstwhile supporters is the betrayal. When a conservative politician does it, what bothers the supporters is the sex.

And after watching a series of scandals unfold, I’ve come to the conclusion that the liberal reaction — that the hypocrisy of the moralizers undermines their cause — just doesn’t come to grips with the conservative worldview.

From their point of view the cause, the need to police what people do in bed, is, by definition, right, because it’s literally God-given. So the fact that some of those trying to police what other people do in bed are themselves doing nasty things does not reflect on the cause itself — on the contrary, it shows just how necessary more bed-snooping is.

It’s also notable that conservatives are, in practice, more forgiving of their politicians’ sins than liberals. John Edwards and Eliot Spitzer ended their political careers; Ensign and Vitter are still in the Senate, and Newt Gingrich is out there on the Sunday shows, speaking for the GOP. Why? Because where liberals see gross hypocrisy, conservatives see men doing the Lord’s work — which partially excuses their own failings. Liberals think that a man who has an affair is worse if he preaches moral values; conservatives think he’s better. You might say that as they see it, if he interferes with what enough other people do in bed, it doesn’t matter what he does himself.

[Emphasis mine.]

This is inexcusable:

As financial markets tumbled and the government worked to stave off panic by pumping billions of dollars into banks last fall, several members of Congress who oversee the banking industry were grabbing up or dumping bank stocks.

Anticipating bargains or profits or just trying to unload before the bottom fell out, these members of the House Financial Services Committee or brokers on their behalf were buying and selling stocks including Bank of America and Citigroup — some of the very corporations their committee would later rap for greed, a Plain Dealer examination of congressional stock market transactions shows.

Financial disclosure records show that some of these Financial Services Committee members, including Ohio Rep. Charlie Wilson, made bank stock trades on the same day the banks were getting a government bailout from a program Congress approved. The transactions may not have been illegal or against congressional rules, but securities attorneys and congressional watchdog groups say they raise flags about the appearance of conflicts of interest.

No member of Congress should be allowed to own stock in any company that participates in an industry he or she oversees. Congress people should be forced to put their assets in a blind trust, and the first action of that trust should be to swap out assets for ones of similar value so that the Congressperson doesn’t know what industries, if any, their actions could be benefiting. The only way to stop this kind of corruption is to make it has close to impossible as we can.

Anyone caught doing this should be expelled from the Congress. They won’t be, of course, because ethics is just another partisan weapon and the notion of Caeser’s wife is s dead as, well, Caeser. It is not that most members of Congress are corrupt. Most almost certainly aren’t — people with the talent to rise to a seat in the House or the Senate are generally talented enough or connected enough to have gone into much more lucrative businesses. But they swim in a sea of corruption. Their elections are dependent upon raising more money than Midas and the, as this scandal proves, there are far too many ways for them to come across opportunities to be corrupt. This has to change. We cannot have a functioning democracy was institutions that are as compromised as ours are.

My only response to this is this.

That is all.

Flame on.

Publius hits it out of the park:

The bottom line is that reform is needed because the private market isn’t working — and can’t work. As Klein’s post reminds us, the goal of private insurance companies is to make a profit. They want to take in more money, and pay out less. That means that insurance companies have every incentive to reject unhealthy (high cost) people, and to rescind or limit benefits to consumers who suddenly become high-cost.

That’s the nature of a profit-driven health care system. We should expect nothing less. Lions eat zebras, insurance companies seek profit — that’s their essence. It doesn’t make them bad. It just makes them poor candidates for guardians of the public’s health.

…snip…

And one last point — the Republican Party does not care, has not cared, and will not care about ending this sorry state of affairs. They’ve never tried, and they have no serious plans to try today. So there’s no reason to accommodate them now, or to meet them halfway. Or even quarter-way. They’ll oppose the plan anyway, and they’ll begin attacking it before the ink of Obama’s signature is dry.

When they get serious about addressing the real problem — when they show that they care about something other than protecting the insurance industry — then maybe Dems should listen. But that day isn’t coming anytime soon.

I’d only add that there are several Blue Dogs that should be added to that list.

I was just telling my wife how I’d like to go hike the Appalachian Trail one day, and she slapped me across the face! I had no idea why!

Oh, now I get it!

Seriously (or, as Barbie would say, Srsly!), what is up with these knuckleheads who can’t keep it in their pants? Especially people like Edwards and now Sanford who had at least an outside chance of getting their party’s nomination for president of the friggin United States!

Setting aside KTK’s previous point about whether or not it ought to be a big deal when politicos “hike the Appalachian Trail,” the fact remains that it is a big deal, and everyone knows this. It’s not some secret. The hubris is mind-boggling.

A cynic might argue that his change of heart is just a function of reading the political tea leaves — and there’s probably some of that to it — but it’s still a sign of the times, and more evidence that the proponents of marriage equality are winning.

Via TPM.

In the current health care reform debate, the “public option” is getting a lot of attention, and rightly so: the idea is that it would be a government-run alternative to signing on with a private insurer, and proponents say this would help keep costs down (a point with which I generally agree). “Free market” conservatives (George Will, for example, among many others) are bemoaning this possibility, however, claiming that this “unfair” competition would bring all sorts of doom and gloom. But this doesn’t make any sense to me, and is inconsistent with the rhetoric of the free market types. Aren’t they normally arguing that the market is inherently more efficient than government? Don’t they generally contend that the bureaucracy and inherent inefficiency of government programs make them considerably more expensive than what can be achieved in the private sector? Isn’t the private sector supposed to be more responsive to the needs of the customers?

Given all of this, I would expect free-market ideologues to welcome the “public option” with open arms. After all, it gives them an opportunity to directly demonstrate the efficiencies they’ve been telling us about all along. If what they’re arguing is true, then in a scenario where a government-run plan exists alongside private plans, the private plans should beat the living snot out of the government plan in terms of cost, performance, customer satisfaction, etc.

That is, of course, assuming they actually believe their own rhetoric on the matter. Which, I suspect, isn’t the safest assumption one can make.

UPDATE: Via Krugman, the president himself is making roughly the same argument I just did:

QUESTION: Wouldn’t that drive private insurance out of business?

OBAMA: Why would it drive private insurance out of business? If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care; if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can’t run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That’s not logical.

Hello, drivers. Tgirsch here. How’s by you? Good? Great to hear. Listen, I was hoping I could ask you for a small favor. But first, let’s establish some credentials here. Are you currently driving on the expressway? If no, we don’t need to talk right now. Are you currently stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic? If yes, thanks for your time, but you can’t really help me, either. Are you currently in the far left-hand lane of said expressway? If no, again, thank you for your time, but it’s not you I need right now.

There, now that we have the audience narrowed sufficiently, let’s chat a bit. How long have you been in the left-hand lane? I’m guessing a while now. I know, because I was born and raised in Wisconsin, and I learned to drive there. So let’s start with a little mini-favor, a precursor to the real favor, shall we? When it’s safe for you to do so, please glance off to your right (that’s the side where your passenger sits, if you have a passenger). Go ahead, and be sure to also check your passenger-side mirror, if your car has one. Are there any cars to your right, preventing you from moving over? If so, are you currently, actively in the process of passing those cars? If the answer to both of those questions is “yes,” then again, thank you for your time, but you can’t really help me here.

Now, on to the rest of you. I know you’re attached to the left lane. It’s like a warm, comfortable blanket. As I said, I know this very well, because I used to be just like you. But if you’re not actively passing other cars that are to your right, then I’m talking to you, and we’re ready for the favor: pretty please, with sugar on top, get the fuck out of the left-hand lane! You might be doing the speed limit. You may even be exceeding the speed limit. That doesn’t matter. If you’re not passing a slower-moving car, you do not belong in that lane. You may have even learned that you are in the “fast lane.” You learned wrong. You’re in the passing lane. It’s for passing other cars. That’s how it got that name. If you’re not passing slower cars, please, move over to the right as soon as is safely possible. (It would be helpful if you put on your right turn signal, notifying other drivers of your intent to move over that way. Just be sure to turn it off once you’ve moved over.)

If you’re still in the left-hand lane, you may notice that someone is behind you. You may be getting annoyed, because that someone behind you is tailgating you. That someone might even be me. And if it’s not me, and whoever it is is REALLY persistent, they may even be flashing their brights at you, furthering your annoyance. Though it can be hard to see past your annoyance, let me assure you that it is not the other driver who is in the wrong, but you. For you are preventing someone from passing you by hogging the passing lane. Again, move over to the right as soon as is safely possible. It’s okay. There’s nothing to fear.

If you tend to drive faster than the flow of traffic, you may find that this has you changing lanes rather frequently. That’s okay. Think of it as something else to do — a way to keep yourself awake and alert as you drive. Not to mention a reminder that driving so fast is not to be undertaken lightly. Do everyone a favor, and learn not to hoard the left-hand lane. You’ll make the expressway a better place, and you’ll get far fewer dirty looks and middle fingers in the unlikely event that you drive somewhere outside of America’s Dairyland.

I’m glad we had a chance to have this little chat. Thanks so much for your time.

- Tgirsch

NOTE TO CHICAGOLAND DRIVERS: Before you get all smug and do the “Ha-ha, Wisconsin!” finger-point, please note that you’re at least as bad about this as your neighbors to the north, except that you take the extra time to cut people already in the left-hand lane off before slowing down. So the above applies to you as well. Thanks a bunch!

Nah, it was pretty much always hate:

Jourdan Anderson
Annotation Jourdon Anderson, an ex- Tennessee slave, declines his former master’s invitation to return as a laborer on his plantation.
Year 1865
Text Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter and was glad to find you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Col. Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living.

… I served you faithfully for thirty- two years and Mandy twenty years. At $25 a month for me, and $2 a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to $11,680. Add to this the interest for the time our wages has been kept back and deduct what you paid for our clothing and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to.

… In answering this letter please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up and both good- looking girls. You know how it was with Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve and die if it comes to that than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters.

… P.S. — Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

It was treason in defense of slavery, for God’s sake. It’s hard to hate a man more than you must hate him to make him a slave.

Link — and do go read the whole letter — via Justine Larbalestier

I’ve been admiring Ta-Nehisi Coates off and on for some time, but now he’s on my every-day list. I was just staggered by this post today, on the burden of self-justificatory myths.

I want to focus on . . . the South’s psychological need to turn defeat into nobility. I don’t mean defeat in the war, so much as I mean lagging behind the North, economically, and due to slavery, lagging behind virtually the entire world, morally.

I’ve actually long overlooked that last point by noting to myself that virtually all societies practiced slavery. But in the 1850s, the South was only bested in the scale of its slavery, by Russian serfdom. Thus this country was not merely a moral offender among many, but a moral offender on a grand scale, plying its trade at a point when much of the rest of the world had moved forward.

It is one thing to be judged immoral. But to be judged immoral and backward, at the same time, to be both debauched, and yet in your debauchery, still be a loser, is deeply painful. . . .

Nathan Bedford Forrest (pictured above) is beautiful. Again, dig those steely eyes, that dead serious countenance, the warrior’s beard. His story is American–the dirt poor son of a blacksmith who becomes a millionaire. But he’s noble too, and volunteers to fight for his home state of glorious Tennessee. With no military training, he rises to the rank of Lieutenant General, giving the Union hell the whole time.

Forrest is the model of Southern chivalry–too much so. He made his money buying and selling people like me, and when the war started he dutifully enforced the Confederate policy of giving no quarter to black soldiers. At Fort Pillow he massacred black soldiers trying to surrender, and afterward went on to found the Ku Klux Klan. Tennessee is dotted with monuments, not simply to the generals of the Confederacy, but to the first Grand Wizard of the KKK (Forrest).  To this day, you can find people who deny his role in Fort Pillow and in the KKK. . . .

I imagine for a kid coming up in these times, in certain sectors of the South, it’s painful to face up to Nathan Forrest, to the notion that the pomp and glamour, all the talk of honor and independence was, at the end of the day, dependent on slavery. The Lost Cause isn’t just “lost,” it’s barely a cause.

This is a beautiful piece of writing - and the long version is better. (He’s not just crapping on the South, much as they deserve it. He notes the experience of overcoming his own myths, and how liberating that can be.) Coates often sees right to the heart of things, and has a clean and pointed way of expressing that. And not rarely, he tees one up and hits it right out of the park. He needs to be read.

I’m also going to make a point of looking for the book he references, James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom.