Archive
July 5, 2009 - July 11, 2009
Saturday, July 11, 200911 Jul 2009 08:36 pm Dissent Of The DayA reader writes:
11 Jul 2009 08:00 pm Orwell's Flaws
Liam Julian points them out: Orwell, to put it kindly, does not win the Nostradamus award for
prescience. Nor does he win an award for enlightened public policy. At
one point, he pressed for capping individual incomes in Britain such
that no person would earn more than ten times the salary of the
lowest-paid worker. An unworkable plan, obviously, and that Orwell
would suggest it betrays an ignorance of politics, policy, and human
nature. It also betrays an ignorance of Frédéric Bastiat’s wisdom about
the relationship between liberty and equality — viz, that mandating the
latter will always destroy the former. Orwell advocated nationalizing
not a few things, too: all major industry, all agricultural land, and
all privately run schools. It is striking that the author of 1984 would write, approvingly, that at “the moment that all productive goods have been declared the property of the
State, the common people will feel, as they cannot feel now, that the State is themselves.”
Continue reading "Orwell's Flaws" » 11 Jul 2009 07:13 pm El Paso, Home Sweet Home
Radley Balko explores the connection between immigration and safety: "If you want to find a safe city, first determine the size of the immigrant population," says Jack Levin, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Massachusetts. "If the immigrant community represents a large proportion of the population, you're likely in one of the country's safer cities. San Diego, Laredo, El Paso—these cities are teeming with immigrants, and they're some of the safest places in the country."
11 Jul 2009 06:10 pm The Reparations FantasyH. W. Brands reviews Margaret MacMillan's new book on the uses and abuses of history. He then proposes: A statute of historical limitations would serve particularly well to defuse one of the most explosive issues in American historical politics. MacMillan mentions but doesn’t delve into the demands for reparations to the descendants of African-American slaves. These demands crop up recurrently, but though they haven’t yet gone anywhere, they never quite go away. And while they linger, they threaten to thoroughly poison the atmosphere on race. Without question the millions of men, women and children forced into servitude were horribly wronged. But righting that wrong, a century and a half after emancipation, transcends the power of mortals. Continue reading "The Reparations Fantasy" » 11 Jul 2009 04:20 pm Mental Health Break11 Jul 2009 03:07 pm Has The Stimulus Failed?Daniel Gross says it's too early to tell: Perhaps the biggest mistake stimulus proponents made was to suggest
that this recession would (and could) end quickly. Modern America is
not equipped—financially, socially, or psychologically—to deal with
long recessions. We don't have the safety net or the savings to cope
with a protracted downturn. And fortunately, we haven't had to. The
last two recessions, which ended in 2001 and 1992, respectively, lasted only eight months each.
But recessions brought on by financial crises are always deeper and
more long-lasting than other recessions, as economists Ken Rogoff and
Carmen Reinhardt show in this paper.
By February 2009, when the stimulus package was passed, the recession
was already the longest in 28 years; now it's the longest contraction
since the Great Depression.
11 Jul 2009 02:44 pm "The Life You Save Might Be Mine"Consumerist rounds up 10 of history's most ironic ads. Here's James Dean in a PSA for safe driving: 11 Jul 2009 02:34 pm Econo-SmackdownMegan McArdle takes an ax to Matt Taibbi's prose. 11 Jul 2009 02:26 pm The View From Your Window
Boquete, Panama, 8.30 am 11 Jul 2009 01:40 pm Adventures In Niche Blogging11 Jul 2009 12:15 pm Bound By FundamentalismElizabeth Iskander at World Politics Review writes:
11 Jul 2009 11:49 am Breaking NewsWho needs a second stimulus?: 11 Jul 2009 11:40 am The Mother Of All Jobless RecoveriesThe trade numbers were much better than expected. Brad DeLong predicts the future: Now that we have the May trade figures, the modal forecast is (i) an
economy that was flat in the second quarter relative to the first
quarter, (ii) an economy that starts to grow relatively slowly in the
third quarter, and (iii) an unemployment rate that keeps rising for
another one and a half to two years--like it did in 1992 and 2002--as
the old-fashioned business-cycle productivity-employment pattern is
broken once again. Bob Hall's [National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)] committee is likely to proclaim that
recovery began sometime in the second quarter, but it won't feel like a
recovery to workers (as opposed to asset owners) for quite some time to
come.
11 Jul 2009 11:18 am Obama Derangement SyndromeMr Krauthammer, meet your petard. 11 Jul 2009 11:00 am Imploring AllahA recently surfaced video of a distraught Iranian woman on the night of Neda's death: 11 Jul 2009 10:37 am Kiosk, CtdA reader writes: I thought you’d like to know that Kiosk will be featured at a rally on the national mall today, along with Ahmad Batebi (from the famous picture on the cover of Newsweek in 1999) and others.
11 Jul 2009 10:21 am The Rise And Fall Of A Delusional Celebrity
Donald Craig Mitchell of the Alaska Dispatch offers a concise explanation of the microwave explosion of Sarah Palin's career:
I keep thinking back to the first ever mention of Sarah Palin in the Anchorage Daily News in April 1996, before she had any public office:
Glamour! Well, she has that now. Pity we had to risk the national security of the United States to get the smell of fish out of her clothes. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty.) 11 Jul 2009 10:00 am David Brooks' Inner ThighAnother victim of collapsing manners. Mercifully, I avoid dinners with Republican senators. It's usually far too gay a scene for me. 11 Jul 2009 08:12 am Coffee Chemo-PhobiaJerry Baldwin defends decaf. Katherine Mangu-Ward seconds him. Friday, July 10, 200910 Jul 2009 06:16 pm Dissent Of The DayA reader writes:
As a California state employee, I have to qualify Conor's article.
Only public safety employees (police, firefighters) get that retirement deal. If I retire at 50 (I started with the state at age 30), I would get 20% retirement. The deal for the overwhelming majority of California state workers is:
1% per service year if you retire at 50
2% per service year if you retire at 55
2.5% per service year if you retire 60 or later.
While that is a good retirement plan, if I die young, my family gets much less than they would from a 401k with similar contributions.
10 Jul 2009 05:45 pm The Fight Against Male Genital MutilationA new website has just been set up to increase awareness of this involuntary mutilation of human beings when they are too young to give their consent. 10 Jul 2009 05:30 pm The Poison Pill, CtdA reader writes:
10 Jul 2009 05:11 pm What Exactly Is The Huffington Post?This I didn't know: [If] political coverage gets the most attention in Washington, more than half Huffington Post’s
traffic is driven by gossip and entertainment stories. The day the
Froomkin news broke, for example, the site’s most popular story wasn’t
about health care - it was “American Flag Bikini Moments: What’s YOUR
Favorite?” Indeed, the Washington City Paper’s Amanda Hess called
attention to the sometimes schizophrenic nature of the site in a recent
piece: “Liberal Politics, Sexist Entertainment.” Similarly, columnist
Simon Dumenco, last month in AdAge, wrote that the Huffington Post
“likes to pretend that it's a respectable voice in the mediasphere, but
it shamelessly pumps up its traffic by being just as trashy as, say,
Maxim.” 10 Jul 2009 04:20 pm Mental Health BreakThe world from below: SURFACE : A film from underneath from tu on Vimeo. 10 Jul 2009 04:19 pm The Rooftop ProjectBlogger Chas Danner has collected a vast number of nighttime clips of Iranians chanting "Allah O Akbar!" His goal, with the help of readers, is to obtain one for every day since the election. Follow his progress here. 10 Jul 2009 04:16 pm She Did It For The MoneyLevi, making sense: 10 Jul 2009 04:02 pm The Liberal BearsKrugman and Reich are not seeing the green shoots. Here's Krugman, still trying to sell a second stimulus: [The WSJ's economic forcasters] outlook is quite bleak: on average, the surveyed economists expect unemployment to rise to 10 percent, still be 10 percent in June 2010, and fall only to 9.5 percent by the end of 2010. And a fair number of the forecasters — including Jan Hatzius of Goldman, whose analysis I follow closely, and has been spot on so far — think that unemployment will actually rise through 2010. 10 Jul 2009 03:54 pm Massive Energy Price SwingsSimon Johnson blames governments, not investors. 10 Jul 2009 03:29 pm Previewing The GOP's 2010 OffensiveWeigel checks in on their messaging: “If the American people will let the Republicans back in charge,” said
[Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas)] on the Feb. 19 episode of Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, “the 60
percent of this bill that won’t be spent until after the next election,
we’ll cut it off and let it go to the Americans.” That idea didn’t immediately take...But as unemployment numbers rise, and as the Obama administration is forced to admit
that its early projections of what the stimulus package would achieve
were overly optimistic, Republicans are returning to that February vote
and hanging it around the necks of vulnerable Democrats. Increasingly,
they are echoing Gohmert’s enthusiastic pledge to scrap whatever
stimulus money is left in January 2011. Then blame Obama if the recession deepens: perfect! 10 Jul 2009 03:04 pm Extreme VeganismThis is insane. For vegetarian options that don't require lab tests check out Max Fisher. (Hat tip: Felix Salmon) 10 Jul 2009 02:52 pm When Palin Quoted CronkiteShe did, of course, remove the context: Playboy: Implicit in the Administration's attempts to force the networks to "balance" the news is a conviction that most newscasters are biased against conservatism. Is there some truth in the view that television newsmen tend to be left of center? Continue reading "When Palin Quoted Cronkite" » 10 Jul 2009 02:44 pm "Pride"That's the headline in Britain's "Soldier" magazine with a cover image of a gay soldier, proudly serving his country. Check it out. The story inside? "Equal Partners: Gay Soldiers Hail Army's Strides In Diversity." 10 Jul 2009 02:44 pm The View From Your Recession: San Antonio vs BeloitA lot of great discussion generated from this post. A reader writes:
Another writes:
Continue reading "The View From Your Recession: San Antonio vs Beloit" » 10 Jul 2009 02:39 pm Dispatches From An Alternate UniverseUnable or unwilling to grasp her true accomplishments and character,
the media shoehorned Palin into a ready-made caricature of the
know-nothing Christian PTA mom who enters politics because of "those
damned lib'ruls." The reality is far different. Palin is a savvy and
charismatic politician whose career has been filled with courageous
stands against entrenched authority. Ideological or partisan
attachments do not concern her. She has her flaws--who doesn't?--but
they should be measured against her strengths. Instead the media
ignored the positives and colluded with Palin's adversaries to reduce
her to a cartoon.
10 Jul 2009 02:22 pm Too Many Rats In The MazeEd Yong summarizes a new study: The simple act of comparing yourself against someone else can stoke the fires of competition. When there are just a few competitors around, making such comparisons is easy but they become more difficult when challengers are plentiful. As a result, the presence of extra contenders, far from spurring us on by adding extra challenge, can actually have the opposite effect. This appears to hold true even when the chances of success remain the same. Join a smaller gym. (Hat tip: Vaughan) 10 Jul 2009 01:55 pm Guilty After Proven Innocent?, CtdDeborah Pearlstein debates the legality of post-acquittal detention: The Administration’s litigating position is that there is an ongoing, non-international armed conflict (i.e. a conflict not between two states, but between the United States and the organization Al Qaeda); and that the 2001 [Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF)] passed by Congress gives it ongoing authority to subject certain individuals (just who is the central subject of litigation) to military detention until the end of the U.S.-v.-A.Q. conflict. There is nothing in the Geneva Conventions that would affirmatively authorize such detention. But neither is there anything in the Geneva Conventions that would squarely prohibit it (provided, as always, it’s subject to adequate procedures, humane treatment, etc.). If the Administration is right about the scope of the AUMF – an interpretation that I believe is overbroad but that has so far been largely winning in the district courts – then presumably the same logic about post-acquittal detention applies... A.L. has more: Continue reading "Guilty After Proven Innocent?, Ctd" » 10 Jul 2009 01:46 pm Pot Meet KettleFrom Iranian state media: In a telephone conversation with Secretary General of the 56-nation
Organization of the Islamic Conference Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Iranian
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki voiced Iran’s support for “the
rights of Chinese Muslims”. (Hat tip: 10 Jul 2009 01:38 pm Outing Iran: KioskA reader writes:
From Wikipedia:
Continue reading "Outing Iran: Kiosk" » 10 Jul 2009 01:19 pm The Cheney SyndromeMichael Goldfarb, with a straight face, says Palin is a natural choice for conservatives focused on national security. Conor is aghast: As a voter for whom foreign policy is my top priority, I think it is absolutely nutty that Sarah Palin is the top choice for these folks. She doesn't have any foreign policy experience at all! Nor has she articulated any insights, opinions, or guiding philosophies that would shape her decision-making on these matters. It is deeply irrational to believe that putting Sarah Palin in the White House rather than another Republican would improve America's national security. What Goldfarb means, I suspect, is that the neocons could use her, as they used Bush, for more wars, invasions and occupations - for liberty! 10 Jul 2009 01:13 pm Charging The CameraA dramatic scene from yesterday: 10 Jul 2009 01:09 pm Help The Party, Stay HomeRepublicans facing tough elections in 2010 don’t want Sarah Palin campaigning with them.
10 Jul 2009 01:07 pm In The Name Of FederalismDale Carpenter on how to read Massachusetts' DOMA lawsuit. 10 Jul 2009 12:54 pm Palin, Obama And PreparationA helpful guide to why Palin is indeed a poison pill for what's left of her party: These results show that Obama was able to use his campaign to reassure
voters about his qualifications for office, but they also show how deep
a perceived hole Palin is now in. When Obama began his campaign in
early 2007, only a third of voters (32%) considered him "not very" or
"not at all qualified" to be president. Compare that to the 55% who say
Palin is not "fit" for the presidency now or to the 52% to 59% who said
she was not "prepared" or not "qualified" last October.
10 Jul 2009 12:47 pm "A Half-Literate Typist"Jamie Kirchick takes on Mario Lavandeira, aka Perez Hilton. 10 Jul 2009 12:35 pm The Poison Pill From Wasilla IIPeggy Noonan wakes up as well: "The media did her in." Her lack of any appropriate modesty did her in. Actually, it's arguable that membership in the self-esteem generation harmed her. For 30 years the self-esteem movement told the young they're perfect in every way. It's yielding something new in history: an entire generation with no proper sense of inadequacy. "Turning to others means the media won!" No, it means they lose. What the mainstream media wants is not to kill her but to keep her story going forever. She hurts, as they say, the Republican brand, with her mess and her rhetorical jabberwocky and her careless causing of division. Really, she is the most careless sower of discord since George W. Bush, who fractured the party and the movement that made him. Why wouldn't the media want to keep that going? 10 Jul 2009 12:21 pm The Poison Pill From WasillaRoom For Debate asks Republican strategists about Palin's future. Pete Wehner seems to have woken up: If Sarah Palin becomes the face and future of the G.O.P., it would take a huge step toward securing its position as a minority party for many years to come.
10 Jul 2009 11:50 am Obama's Bloody Wars Of OccupationTom Ricks takes note: June was
the bloodiest month of the war in Afghanistan, reports John McCreary, the
former DIA analyst who follows the fighting there closely. This seems to be
shifting to a war of roadside bombs, very different from the war of a few years
ago. And Iraq edges closer and closer to the violent disintegration that anyone with any sense of history could have predicted. It's important to remember that the surge failed. It failed to provide a political space to forge a new oil law; it failed to integrate the Awakening forces into an Iraqi army; it failed to solve the Kurdish problem; it failed to bring about a durable national government that all Iraqis could trust and participate in. My fear is that by extending the presence of vast numbers of US troops well into his first term, by caving in to the Pentagon, by not making a clean break with his predecessor, Obama has now begun to own the very war he was nominated to end. If that happens he will lose the revanchist right (like he would ever have won them over) and his Democratic and realist base. I sure hope I'm wrong - that we can get out without an implosion, and that if things return to their baseline chaotic state, Obama won't be blamed, Bush and Cheney will (as they should). But pessimism is the default mode one should have with the basket-case of Iraq. Iran? You know: the country we didn't invade. Much more hopeful. 10 Jul 2009 11:28 am Who Quits In The First Term?A Mudflats reader went to work:
Two quit because of a scandal just too big and too indefensible to avoid. The other one? We're still guessing. All we know for sure is that whatever she says isn't true. It never is. 10 Jul 2009 11:05 am One Reason California Is BankruptConor Friedersdorf explains: In California, a state worker can retire at age 50, do absolutely nothing all day, and collect 90 percent of their salary for the rest of their lives!
5,000 of these pensions amount to six figures incomes. Nor can the
state afford the system it has. As the Matt Welch piece mentions, "the
state's annual pension fund contribution vaulted from $321 million in
2000-01 to $7.3 billion last year." That is a rather alarming rate of
growth, and an astonishing figure, don't you think? Given that the
state is bankrupt and issuing IOUs to its creditors, it doesn't seem
unreasonable to complain that public employee unions have extracted
benefits that are both obviously unaffordable and far in excess of what
is enjoyed by the taxpayers who finance them.
10 Jul 2009 10:35 am The View From Your Window
Sydney, Australia, 9.30 am
July 5, 2009 - July 11, 2009
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