Happy Birthday to Tammy Duckworth, 45.
On to the good stuff:
1. David Frum doesn't like Woodrow Wilson and explains why you shouldn't, either.
2. New Buzzfeed WH reporter Evan McMorris-Santoro seems to be starting out with a healthy realistic view of the job. I wrote about this a while ago, by the way.
3. Andrew Sprung on the GOP, electioneering effects, and more.
4. Health care real estate, from Sarah Kliff.
5. And via Sarah Binder, Richard Arenberg's filibuster defense.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
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Criticizing Wilson for lack of preparedness is not entirely fair, because when he did embark on a preparedness program in 1915-16 (though of course he did not go as far as Theodore Roosevelt wanted) he ran into sharp opposition from agrarians in the West and South, including the Democratic majority leader of the House, Claude Kitchen. I'm not sure it was politically feasible for him to have gone much further than he did.
ReplyDeleteI'm no Wilson fan, but your right that Frum really missed the boat when it comes to American military preparedness for World War I. In 1904, less than eight years before Wilson took over and ruined everything, the Army consisted of a whopping 50,000 enlisted-men and 3,000 officers. This massive force was in turn divided up John Wayne movie/frontier style into 31 regiments of infantry and 15 of cavalry most of which were still stationed on old western frontier forts that Congress refused to close. Their was basically no general staff, instead the Army was dominated by eight different bureaus that fought turf wars and made even basic coordination incredibly difficult. So yeah just blaming Wilson is basically silly. Basically all American elites today, outside of a few people like Ron Paul, take American military hegemony over the world as a given, but back then a large military was often seen as a threat to democracy, or at the very least a waste of money. That's why America was unready for World War I.
Delete#4:
ReplyDeleteWhat to do with the extra space they’ve acquired, as more urgent care centers pop up
Some of these are amazing -- closer to free-market healthcare than anything besides LASIK. Imagine: you walk in to a waiting room filled with people who are all payers (no freeloaders or feces throwers.) There's a list of reasonable prices for a lot of services. You don't wait for hours like you do at an emergency room (because you're a customer with options.) It's the kind of service usually reserved for rich people.
Opapa/Berman probably want to close them all.