Friday, March 6, 2009

06 Mar 2009 11:33 am

We Have Been Warned

"We have to prepare ourselves for an Israeli attack [on Iran] by the end of this year," - Charles Krauthammer.

06 Mar 2009 11:30 am

The View From Your Window

Austin, Texas, 6.30 pm

06 Mar 2009 11:15 am

Fair And Balanced

"I see this as the Alamo. If I just had somebody who was willing to sit on the other side of the camera until the last shot is fired, we'd be fine," - Roger Ailes, according to Glenn Beck, on the objective neutrality of his news organization.

06 Mar 2009 11:08 am

Ah, Yes. That's What Happened.

Rich Lowry:

For years now, Democrats have brayed about the “politicization” of intelligence. Their only real evidence for this charge was that Dick Cheney asked the CIA a few questions.

06 Mar 2009 11:07 am

Do You Want The Bad News Or The Bad News?

Martin Feldstein, professor of economics at Harvard and former chairman of Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisors, thinks we are going to need a second stimulus. Here's why:

Previous reactions to declines in household wealth indicate that such a fall will cut consumer spending by about US$500 billion every year until the wealth is restored. While a higher household saving rate will help to rebuild wealth, it would take more than a decade of relatively high saving rates to restore what was lost.

(hat tip: Mark Thoma)

06 Mar 2009 10:34 am

Staffing Treasury

The delays in staffing the Treasury at a moment like this are simply incomprehensible to me. Geithner just lost two critical appointments who have withdrawn. Apparently, the pace of appointments is not particularly slow:

Treasury spokesman Isaac Baker declined to comment on specific nominations, but said the department was still ahead of recent previous administrations in filling jobs, with over 50 political appointees at work.

It's March and we are in the sharpest downturn since the 1930s. They really can't go any faster?

Continue reading "Staffing Treasury" »

06 Mar 2009 10:21 am

The Lucrative War On Obama

If you're O'Reilly, Hannity or Beck, there's a very good reason to keep calling Obama a socialist, communist, radical destroyer of all America stands for. The ratings. You don't need a political majority to be a successful gabber on cable. You certainly don't need to persuade anyone. You need an energized minority. If you have had your sense of shame surgically removed, as these entertainers have, what could possibly lead you to moderate - or even have alternative views on your shows?

06 Mar 2009 10:05 am

Good News From California

Reading all the accounts of the oral arguments on Prop 8 yesterday (for a diverse round-up, see here), I have to say there's a chance of what, to my mind, is the optimal decision. The Justices seemed highly skeptical - and rightly so - that a voters' initiative could not change the results of a controversial court decision. Since the No On 8 forces campaigned last year under the same assumption, it's a little rich to see them now protest that the vote was not a real one anyway and they engaged in it only on the assurance that they would win. Moreover, if the court upholds Prop 8, we avoid giving the Hewitts and Romneys and Santora their "black robes" moment, an endless harangue about evil judges despotically dictating to God-fearing Americans. I've been in enough of those arguments to want to avoid them in future. They deflect debate from the real issue: that gay marriage is good for gays, straights and society as a whole. They give bigots a legitimate reason to oppose our equality, while allowing them to avoid the real arguments for it.

At the same time, I devoutly hope that the 18,000 existing civil marriages are not retroactively nullified.

Continue reading "Good News From California" »

06 Mar 2009 09:37 am

Obamacon Pepto-Bismol

A little something for my collywobbles:

The White House claims the budget will not produce a sea of red ink. Deficits are now at a gargantuan 12 percent of G.D.P., but the White House aims to bring this down to 3.5 percent in 2012. Besides, the long-range debt is what matters, and on this subject President Obama is hawkish.

He is  extremely committed to entitlement reform and is plotting politically feasible ways to reduce Social Security as well as health spending. The White House folks didn’t say this, but I got the impression they’d be willing to raise taxes on the bottom 95 percent of earners as part of an overall package.

Read the whole thing. I'm glad we have David Brooks these days.

06 Mar 2009 08:53 am

The Truth About Bush

Larison doesn't want to bury the past:

...the main objections to the truth commission Sen. Leahy has been trying to organize are that it will be highly politicized and will be nothing more than a witch hunt. Of course, the use of the phrase “witch hunt” today implies a hunt in pursuit of something that does not exist, while we are fairly certain that there were criminals in the outgoing administration who have thus far escaped the appropriate sanctions of the law. The best argument that witnesses testifying against the idea of forming a commission seem to have had is that the abuses of power and crimes in question are not as numerous as they were under Pinochet and apartheid. Now that’s a claim to moral authority.

We have a situation where a president authorized illegal torture, disappeared many terror suspects, subverted the rule of law, suspended the First and Fourth Amendments secretly, wiretapped citizens secretly - and never copped to any of it. The idea that we should simply forget about this and move on without a serious accounting of what actually happened is as bizarre as it is disturbing. The truth, by the way, may well impugn members of Congress, including some leading Democrats, as well as other world leaders, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown among them. Why would we not want to know what was done in our name?

06 Mar 2009 08:37 am

The Limits Of Facebook

Humans can only process so many friends - around 150, according to anthropologists. The rest is grooming, like chimps. And the real circle of communicants is stable and small:

[A]n average man—one with 120 friends—generally responds to the postings of only seven of those friends by leaving comments on the posting individual’s photos, status messages or “wall”. An average woman is slightly more sociable, responding to ten. When it comes to two-way communication such as e-mails or chats, the average man interacts with only four people and the average woman with six. Among those Facebook users with 500 friends, these numbers are somewhat higher, but not hugely so. Men leave comments for 17 friends, women for 26. Men communicate with ten, women with 16.

06 Mar 2009 08:22 am

The Stimulation Of Others

Another reason to see through the cant of Gordon Brown. His own fiscal stimulus was 0.9 percent of GDP - far less than even Russia. And yet he speaks about global coordination.

06 Mar 2009 08:12 am

Fisking Harvard

Gary Langer checks the bankruptcy and health insurance data.

06 Mar 2009 08:09 am

Medical Marijuana

Has the dam of resistance finally burst?

Thursday, March 5, 2009

05 Mar 2009 08:32 pm

The Broad Middle

Yglesias draws lines between opponents and supporters of health reform:

...we have the people in the middle. These are people, and you find them in both parties, who happily concede the need to reform the health care system. But they think the time isn’t right. Maybe we should wait until we solve the economic crisis, end the war in Iraq, stabilize Pakistan, and balance the budget and then sometimes in the dim mists of the future we can reform the health care system. Maybe we “can’t afford it” right now.

Continue reading "The Broad Middle" »

05 Mar 2009 07:30 pm

Statistics, Statistics

"I think if there was a mistake in “Dow 36,000,” it was that we in that one sentence did hazard a guess. We sort of said two different things: It’s impossible to predict when this is going to happen, and then we said, well, we’ll predict it, anyway," -  Jim Glassman.

(Hat tip: Balloon Juice)

05 Mar 2009 07:15 pm

Not Since Hewitt-Sullivan ...

The Mark Levin-David Frum dust-up - on air no less - is a riveting example of two varieties of American conservatism colliding. You can listen to it here. David finishes his post thus:

As I hung up, I wondered what it would be like to be a new listener, a nonpolitical person, tuning in to Mark Levin’s show for the first time. The ferocious hatred and anger – the shouting at people not present to reply, the self-pitying complaints against a world that does not pay enough respect: it’s an ugly performance. Has Levin ever convinced any listener of anything that listener did not already believe? And of those who come to the show uncertain of what they believe - mustn't the vast majority come away from these rage-filled narcissistic tirades thinking, "If that's conservatism, I want no part of it"?

Alas, it is conservatism in America today. And, yes, I want no part of it.

05 Mar 2009 07:09 pm

The War On Freeman

It's escalating. I doubt he can survive. But Republican Kit Bond seems the key player.

05 Mar 2009 06:45 pm

Obama's Choices

Joe Klein on the situation in Afghanistan:

Taken together, the emerging Pakistan and Afghanistan policies sound ... impossible, but unavoidable. They will also be politically treacherous. Already, John McCain has made it clear that his position on Afghanistan will be the same as it was on Iraq — in favor of more troops. Obama could easily find himself in the same sort of hawk-vs.-dove debate that has boggled American Presidents from Vietnam to Iraq. Traditionally, Presidents favor more troops — and precipitously lose public support. In this case, Obama's margin for error is minuscule, given the enormity of the economic crisis. He simply can't get bogged down in Afghanistan. And he simply can't allow al-Qaeda and the Taliban free rein. And every option in between seems either a gamble or a fantasy.

05 Mar 2009 06:28 pm

Face Of The Day

Ameneh Bahrami poses on March 5, 2009 in Barcelona. Bahrami, of Iran, was blinded by a man who threw acid in her face. In 2008 an Iranian court ruled that the man -- identified only as Majid -- a spurned suitor who poured a bucket of sulfuric acid over her head, leaving her blind and disfigured, should also be blinded with acid, based on the Islamic law system of 'qisas', or eye for an eye retribution. Ms Bahrami has said that she is now waiting for a letter from the court to go back to Iran for the punishment to be carried out. By Lluis Gene/AFP/Getty Images.

05 Mar 2009 05:51 pm

Things To Hate About Healthcare

Drum complains:

There are lots of things to hate about our current medical system, and all of us have our own favorite things to hate.  This is mine: the fact that the system massively overcharges you if you're uninsured, and they do it just because they can.  If you're uninsured, you've got no leverage, no alternatives, no nothing.  So you get screwed.  It's like the shopkeepers who charge twenty bucks for a pair of flashlight batteries after hurricanes.  Maybe it's the free market at work, but if so, that's all the worse for the free market.  In the healthcare biz, it just doesn't work.

05 Mar 2009 05:32 pm

But He Has God On His Side

“The Left has put together the most powerful political coalition I’ve ever witnessed,” - Tom DeLay.

(Hat tip: Greg Sargent)

05 Mar 2009 05:16 pm

Wha-What?

Yglesias tries to frame Obama's 3.6 trillion dollar budget as too moderate.

05 Mar 2009 05:03 pm

Prop 8 Oral Argument Reax

John Culhane live-blogged it:

If I had to guess, I’d say that those married between June and November 4, 2008 will still be married. Going forward, forget it. It’s time to dive back into the political process. I don’t expect a unanimous decision on either issue, but I’d be surprised if either vote is close. (I do think that there’s at least a chance that the retroactivity issue will be unanimous.)

Dale Carpenter agrees:

I’m out of the business of predicting with confidence what the California Supreme Court will do based on its oral arguments. So I’ll predict without confidence that: (1) the court will hold that Proposition 8 was a valid amendment, but (2) will also hold that the 18,000 same-sex marriages entered between June and November continue to be recognized and valid in California.

Marriage opponent Maggie Gallagher enjoyed herself:

The most fun was watching the justices grill the California state lawyer, poor man, who had to defend Attorney General Jerry Brown's official position: Prop. 8 was an amendment, not a revision, but the court could strike it down anyway because it violated the "inalienable rights" clause of the California constitution. A joy to watch!

Andy Towle:

Continue reading "Prop 8 Oral Argument Reax" »

05 Mar 2009 04:45 pm

Dissent Of The Day

A reader writes:

I want to take issue with you over your request for the British to show some self respect. In a way you are right – the petty fixation over the Churchill bust and the pen does reflect a sense of unease about the relationship between Britain and the USA. But that unease is confined to two groups – the political media and the current government. I doubt whether ordinary Brits give a damn about the Churchill bust – and if asked I suspect most would see its removal as an understandable desire on Obama’s part to make a symbolic break with the Bush / Blair era. That relationship was unhealthy and led us into the disaster of the Iraq war, the ongoing mess in Afganistan, and who knows what abuses of civil rights. It is good that he is bringing balance back into that relationship.

Brown is in the USA for one reason only – to try and distract the UK media from his colossal mistakes in handling the economy.

Continue reading "Dissent Of The Day" »

05 Mar 2009 04:28 pm

Toast

Megan on GM.

05 Mar 2009 04:20 pm

Mental Health Break

As Nerdcore explains, "Kris Menace remixt Hextatic und das Video dazu ist ein einziger SpaceInvaders-Retrogame-Farben-Porno. Yay!"

05 Mar 2009 04:02 pm

The Limbaugh Delusion

Ta-Nehisi:

These guys think that they are America. They delude themselves with that "center-right nation" analysis, and then mask their losses by claiming they didn't really lose. They think the problem is their wardrobe, their slang, their hairstyle. This what black folks call Project-Bougie or--more aptly put--just plain trifling. The GOP is out shopping for a new dining set, a new couch, a flat-screen--anything to make the crib look a little more inviting. Meanwhile the water bill is two months past due. The lights are off. And the eviction notice is in the mail.

05 Mar 2009 03:47 pm

The Attacks On Chas Freeman

The rhetoric is intensifying. Freeman is called "savage", "shameless", and a "rabid Israel-hater" by National Review. The general term used on the neocon right is "abomination". Chuck Schumer has now contacted Rahm Emmanuel to express his misgivings. At least Schumer is honest:

“It was in a phone call to Rahm,” the source says, adding that Chuck expressed reservations about Freeman’s positions on Israel. “It was about Freeman’s positions on the Middle East.”

I see no reason why Freeman should not be thoroughly vetted and if there are financial conflicts of interest that make it impossible for him to be an effective and even-handed head of the National Intelligence Council, he should withdraw. But none of that is established yet and, as most of the neocon attackers have freely admitted, Freeman was originally targeted not for these reasons but because he has actually criticized the recent policies of the state of Israel in blunt terms.

Continue reading "The Attacks On Chas Freeman" »

05 Mar 2009 03:33 pm

Marriage and Federalism

A reader writes:

The specific situation where under-age people get married speaks directly to your point about the GLAD DOMA challenge: My home state of New Hampshire lets 13-year-old girls get married, if the kid's parents agree. Most other states set the threshold at 16, and a lot of people may find the idea of a 13-year-old girl marrying an older man distasteful - yet there's no DOMA provision discriminating against pre-adolescent marriage.

How is gay marriage different?

I'm assuming the question is rhetorical. But the answer is pretty simple: because gay adults have fewer rights in their relationships than 13-year old straights. Inmates on death row have more rights - they have an inviolable right to marry even if they will never be able to live with or even have sex with their spouse. The clinically insane have an inalienable right to marry. Larry King has the inalienable right to marry seven times to six different women. Suze Orman? Not so much. And the repercussions extend to social security [PDF] and over a thousand other federal benefits.

And that is entirely a deliberate message sent to gay citizens: you are anathema, and your families are worthless. Your own government will continue to treat you as if you did not exist.

05 Mar 2009 03:17 pm

Subsidizing The Golden Rule

Conor Clarke makes the case against charity tax breaks.

05 Mar 2009 02:52 pm

Pathetic, Insecure Brit Watch

The [London] Times' Sarah Vine is all upset because of the presents the Obamas gave the Brown boys:

Mrs Obama gave the Brown children, Fraser and John, two toy models of Marine One, the Presidential helicopter. Fair enough on the helicopter part, always a popular choice with small boys; but Marine One?

Continue reading "Pathetic, Insecure Brit Watch" »

05 Mar 2009 02:38 pm

When Is It Obama's Economy?

Nate Silver tries to determine when voters will hold Obama accountable:

Obama crosses the 50 percent threshold at almost exactly 18 months from now, which would mean September 2010. At that point, a majority of voters say they will hold Obama accountable for the performance of economy.

Perhaps not coincidentally, 18 months is also about the point at which a majority of voters expect the recession to have ended.

05 Mar 2009 02:19 pm

What Hillary Did In Secret

Obama is live-streaming the White House forum on healthcare reform.

05 Mar 2009 02:18 pm

Not As Popular As Communist China

More good news for the GOP.

05 Mar 2009 02:16 pm

YouTube And World Music

You may have heard the hype about Israeli musician Kutiman and his new album, ThruYOU, mixing YouTube visuals and music to create a concoction wholly new and wholly global. The wisdom of crowds just got musical and online. This may be my favorite. This is proof of principle. Seriously: another little leap for this medium. More vids here, if the site is overwhelmed.

05 Mar 2009 02:00 pm

The Underinsured

Karen Tumulty tees up her Time cover story:

I used to think I was something of an authority on health care; I've covered its policy and its politics for 15 years. But when my family took its own trip through the frustrating maze that is this country's health care system, I discovered how much I had to learn. Health problems are behind half the bankruptcies in this country, and three-quarters of those bankrupt people had health insurance when they got sick. Just about anyone could be one diagnosis away from catastrophe. My editors decided to put this story on the cover not because it is so extraordinary, but because it is so common, and becoming more so every day.

05 Mar 2009 01:38 pm

A Simple Request

Josh Marshall wants to know why he can't know where his money is going:

I can see as well as you that my calls for disclosing the identities of the AIG counter parties have fallen on deaf ears. When Sen. Cantwell (D-WA) asked Secretary Geithner today who they were, his answer was an argument that letting AIG default on its obligations posed too grave a systemic risk to the US and global economies -- a claim which I concede may be true but nevertheless ignored the question: who's getting the money?

So how about this? Can we get a clear explanation of why we can't know?

05 Mar 2009 01:20 pm

Restoring Federalism In Marriage Law

The issue behind the new challenge to DOMA is a pretty simple one, as Kenji Yoshino explains. On what grounds does the federal government not simply recognize the marriage laws of the various states? By what reasoning does the federal government recognize all the civil marriages legal in, say, Alabama, but not all of the civil marriages legal in Massachusetts? We know the real reason: a view that homosexuals need to be discriminated against in the law in order to "protect" society from their wicked attempts to live with and care for one another. But the reason on federalist grounds is non-existent.

My own marriage license, for example, is not distinguishable from any other license issued at the same time in Massachusetts. And yet some of those other licenses allow a spouse to get social security benefits and to sponsor a non-citizen for citizenship. I'm legally married in Massachusetts and yet have no right to citizenship on those grounds. Someone who showed up on the Ptown ferry a month ago, and fell in love with an opposite-sex spouse would be eligible to become a citizen relatively soon. I've been here for 25 years and still have no right to stay here indefinitely. The clear meaning of DOMA, of course, is that a gay relationship, however long-lasting or real, is always inferior to even the most temporary straight hook-up. Or to put it another way: the reason we grant citizenship to good faith non-American spouses is because we recognize the human cruelty of forcing a human being to pick between their country and the person they love. But gays, according to DOMA, deserve the cruelty - and many are indeed forced to live abroad or leave their relationships behind.

But leave the inhumanity aside for a moment. On what conservative, federalist grounds do the feds refuse to acknowledge state autonomy in the area of family law? And why should the federal government not do what it always did in these matters: just accept the differing judgments of the states? As long as a civil marriage is valid in a state, it should be recognized by the feds. Why would a real conservative object to that?

(Photo: Jewel Samd/AFP/Getty.)

05 Mar 2009 12:55 pm

Taxing Innovation?

Manzi attacks Obama's budget:

During the campaign, presumably thinking of his Silicon Valley supporters, Obama proposed eliminating capital-gains taxes on start-ups in order to offset some of the tax effects that I’ve highlighted. This idea was always make-believe. As I predicted last July, the president’s just-released budget has “delayed” the proposal until 2014. Translation: it isn’t going to happen. Like the college students who stayed up late to hear Obama’s campaign speeches only to find his first significant action to be a stimulus program that will transfer about $1 trillion from them to the Baby Boomers, Silicon Valley Obama supporters may find themselves in an uncomfortable environment. A government-dominated economic era may not be an auspicious one in which to start companies that threaten big, incumbent corporations with lots of political clout.

Continue reading "Taxing Innovation?" »

05 Mar 2009 12:41 pm

"Atlas Raised His Eyebrow"

Megan reconsiders Ayn Rand, flavor of the month:

Her philosophy does not work, at least if by work we mean generate a framework by which a person or society can order itself.  But she was actually a really very gifted observer, and she had a quite subtle understanding of how all the interconnected elements of an industrial economy fit together.  It's a pity she didn't quite get how human beings worked, especially herself.

05 Mar 2009 12:37 pm

The Wrestler

Uncle Sam, to this untutored eye, needs some steroids.

05 Mar 2009 12:23 pm

Palin And The Minimum Wage

Will she hike it in Alaska - or not?

05 Mar 2009 12:11 pm

Two Roads Converged In A Yellow Wood

Max Magee reacts to Amazon's announcement that Kindle books are now available for the iPhone.

05 Mar 2009 11:47 am

The Fundamentalist Psyche

New research unlocks the genius of George W. Bush:

In two studies led by Assistant Psychology Professor Michael Inzlicht, participants performed a Stroop task – a well-known test of cognitive control – while hooked up to electrodes that measured their brain activity.

Compared to non-believers, the religious participants showed significantly less activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a portion of the brain that helps modify behavior by signaling when attention and control are needed, usually as a result of some anxiety-producing event like making a mistake.

Continue reading "The Fundamentalist Psyche" »

05 Mar 2009 11:33 am

The Seductiveness Of Mormons

A variety of real LDS pick-up lines.

05 Mar 2009 11:22 am

Chas Freeman, On Notice

Eli Lake dutifully serves up the first round of investigation and ominously notes:

"The director did not seek the White House's approval," [Dennis Blair's spokeswoman] Ms. Morigi said. "In addition to his formal background security investigation, we expect that the White House will undertake the typical vetting associated with senior administration assignments."

One suspects he's toast. Yglesias:

If Freeman goes down it won’t, unfortunately, be because a brave new era of good government and clean dealings has arisen; it’ll be a politically motivated neocon hit job. But as I say, if they have the goods they have the goods.

I sure hope some members of the foreign policy establishment in Obama's team have some realist sensibilities.

05 Mar 2009 11:00 am

The View From Your Window

Niamey, Niger, 11 am

05 Mar 2009 10:55 am

Hathos Alert

Steele confesses to Hannity over Limbaugh: "there was no attack on Rush". The one thing I've learned about Steele the last two weeks: he's just really, really dumb.

05 Mar 2009 10:44 am

No Bull

Buttonwood thinks this might be a good time to bet against pessimism:

Lombard Street Research now argues that the US market has only been cheaper for 26 months in the last 140 years. Those months occurred in 1920-21, 1932, 1942 and 1982. Two of those periods reflect the effect of world wars. Of the others, one was the great depression and the other the aftermath of the inflationary 1970s.

Since I hope to be able to retire in the distant future, I'm buying stocks soon.