Two Random, Unrelated Thoughts

1.
The headline, "CBO: Health bill would reduce premiums on average" for the following AP story should really read:

CBO: Premiums on average in health bill will be paid for by someone else.

Subsidies don't lower costs, they shift who pays them.

2.
Thomas Friedman wrote this in an opinion piece today (emphasis mine):

Have no doubt: we punched a fist into the Arab/Muslim world after 9/11, partly to send a message of deterrence, but primarily to destroy two tyrannical regimes — the Taliban and the Baathists — and to work with Afghans and Iraqis to build a different kind of politics. In the process, we did some stupid and bad things. But for every Abu Ghraib, our soldiers and diplomats perpetrated a million acts of kindness aimed at giving Arabs and Muslims a better chance to succeed with modernity and to elect their own leaders.

Wouldn't it have been enormously helpful if editorialists had included that nuanced caveat while relentlessly repeating the Abu Ghraib/torture narrative?