Afghan Health Filibuster

Maybe it is because I woke up too early and am tired that I'm finding so much interesting stuff this morning on my news and blog troll. Here is a great interview asking the question why don't the democrats let Joe and the Party of No fillibuster. It is more complicated than what I suspected, but one source of the reason that just the threat of filibuster is so powerful nowadays is that Congressmen are busy campaigning 24/7.

Ezra has a another interview with health economist Jon Gruber on why a version of the Senate health care bill should be passed and he addresses the question of whether it does enough to address cost. I concur. It should and it does as much as we can expect at the moment. Nicolas Kristof suggests that in deciding whether to send more troops to Afghanistan we should consider the real costs of doing so, and compare those with health care reform. I have been arguing that we need to consider what we hope to accomplish, and this makes me even more leery of more troops. And Megan McCardle advises us not to get consumed with the sunk costs. She also praises Obama's rationality. If only our electorate was as rational. I read in the paper today that 57% favor more U.S. troops. I am still undecided on this issue and am reading Steve Coll's Ghost Wars, which is about Afghanistan from the time of the Russian invasion to 9/11. Already you can see how stupid our leaders were and how little the CIA knew. Kinda reminds me of James Bamford's book The Shadow Factory. Our intelligence agencies knew all about bin Laden long long ago and were spying on him. The NSA was even monitoring the planning center of 9/11 in Yemen and knew about several of the highjackers, but they did not confer with the CIA or the FBI.