Saturday, January 24, 2009

24 Jan 2009 07:53 pm

Online Rubber-Necking

Seth Godin tells everyone to cut it out:

Someone is in a horrible car wreck, so what happens? People slow down to look.

Leaving aside the time tax they place on the people behind them (once I was in a three hour jam due to rubber necking of a death on the other side of the road, across the median), what are these people doing? People who wouldn't dream of paying money to watch a snuff film are indulging their curiosity to see carnage on the side of the road and paying with their time and attention.

You know the punchline: the Net is suddenly filled with rubberneckers. People who spend their time at work watching flame wars or indulging their desire to act like trolls, just to get a response. They race to post about plane crashes or server crashes, and they have no trouble investing an hour in debating something that just makes them feel sick.

24 Jan 2009 06:34 pm

Face Of The Day

A Palestinian schoolgirl inspects her classroom which was burnt during Israel's offensive, at UNRWA's (UN Relief and Works Agency) primary school in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on January 24, 2009. Some 200,000 Gaza children returned to school for the first time since Israel's offensive, many having lost family members, their home and their sense of security. The main UNRWA centre and several schools were destroyed by Israeli bombing during the 22-day war. By Olivier Laban-Mattei/AFP/Getty Images.

Now that the offensive is over, it seems to me that its wisdom and morality are even more questionable than before. If Israelis believe that this little girl above will blame Hamas for what was done to her school, or that the unimaginable trauma inflicted on Palestinian civilians will in any way help secure the future of the Jewish state, or that what they have done will end the tunnel smuggling, then their judgment is even more impaired that many of us feared. More on Monday.

24 Jan 2009 05:08 pm

Two Planes, Two Worlds

It's funny but even during the mayhem of Inauguration week, the image of that A320 being landed safely on the Hudson kept coming back to me. And when I read that its remains had ended up floating not far from Ground Zero, I couldn't help but marvel at the historical and civilizational symmetry of it all.

Over seven years ago, a group of religious extremists seized control of an aircraft in that same airspace, men who had very little flying experience and a philosophy of maximizing the deaths of innocent civilians on the ground. They did all they could to murder as many as they could in order to secure the maximum reward for themselves in heaven and in worldly renown.

Seven years later, two pilots who have since remained remarkably distant from media attention, were in a similar cockpit in the same crowded area and their over-riding concern was to prevent any civilian casualties at all. That's why they even avoided small airports which might have led to a crash into inhabited neighborhoods. With enormous expertise, gained by rigorous training in a civilized society, they managed to land safely on the river and save everyone both on board and on the ground.

It seems to me that dignity and training and expertise and humaneness are the values of our society at its best. All of them are self-evidently superior to the values of vainglory, amateurism, impulsiveness and cruelty that bedevil our enemies. If these are the grounds on which we fight this war - and they are ours to choose - then we will win. And we will deserve to.

24 Jan 2009 04:21 pm

The Obama Effect?

This small study hasn't been replicated but it blew my mind. The resilient gap between black and white test scores is one of the most intractable and debilitating social facts of our age. If any part of it can be erased by a psychological shift in the hearts and minds of African-American students, it's cause for rejoicing.

A small anecdote. I know a neighbor in my hood from walking my beagles. She teaches in a local school and is even more aware than the rest of us in this city how challenging it is to teach and rear a self-confident generation of minority kids. She's African-American and has long bemoaned the ubiquitous use of the n-word by young black teens. But she pointed out to me months ago that there was one man they never used the n-word to describe. It was Obama. If he can help lift eyes to a larger horizon for more generations of minority children, then surely liberals and conservatives and everyone in between can be glad.

24 Jan 2009 04:20 pm

Mental Health Break

Ellen makes a call to Gladys:

24 Jan 2009 02:37 pm

Ted Haggard: A Tortured Gay Man

More sad details here. At some point, surely evangelical Christians will have to ask themselves: are we going to continue to demonize homosexuality to such an extent that even our ablest preachers and leaders are led into destructive, secret and often abusive relationships because we cannot allow them to pursue open and honest and loving ones?

The countless gay men who are currently running many of the world's leading Christian denominations are threats to themselves, to other gay men, to their wives and their churches because ancient doctrine forces them into twisted shells of human beings. In the Catholic church, this led to a horrifying epidemic of child abuse, protected and enabled by the last two Popes. And their response to this? To ratchet up the psychological pressure even further on the men whose psyches and souls they have already permanently warped.

When will this end?

24 Jan 2009 02:18 pm

Readers Write

A reader asks:

For the curious and relatively new among your readers (like me), could you tell us how many emails you get each day from readers, how many you read, how you select the ones you read, how you select the ones you respond to and/or publish?  Do you like getting emails? Are you glad we write you about what we're thinking, even if you can't respond?  Is it helpful, or just burdensome?  Is there something that readers like me, who yearn for more conversation at the Dish, can do to make our emailed thoughts helpful, and not burdensome?

The volume varies with the season. At the height of the campaign, we may have been getting over a thousand emails a day. It's lighter on weekends. My current in-tray shows, LOL, 94,000 emails. That's cumulative since the latest culling. It's roughly 500 a day by my count. It is physically impossible to read them all, but I check them several times a day, respond to as many as I can and have learned over almost nine years how to scan them for helpful links or tips or arguments. Some email addresses I know by heart and also know they will contain wisdom or amusement. Others I just open at random like Christmas presents. Patrick then goes through as many as he can as well so we catch as much quality as we can.

I love the emails. It's wondrous to me how much time and effort people put into them when they know they will get no recognition - but that anonymity also brings out more honesty and passion. People write because they feel strongly about something and that comes across. It takes work - but when people say we have no comments section it isn't entirely true. We have a highly edited comments section and one that we try hard to keep cogent and critical of our own work.

And then there are times when I'm sick like the last few days when the emails of fun and cheer and encouragment really make my day. None of this is burdensome. I feel immensely lucky to have found a readership this smart and knowledgeable and wise. It's like our own private Wikipedia back here. So keep 'em coming - photos, quips, quotes and brutal take-downs.

24 Jan 2009 01:51 pm

In Defense Of Ads

Commercials make viewing TV more enjoyable?

24 Jan 2009 01:48 pm

Benedict Lifts This Man's Ex-Communication

This vile anti-Semite and Holocaust-denier has just been allowed back into the Catholic Church. Benedict's rationale:

"The Holy Father in this decision was inspired by the wish that full reconciliation and full communion can be achieved soon," the Vatican said.

Unbelievable. But if you really grasp how reactionary Benedict is, not terribly shocking. The Times' Ruth Gledhill:

Could the clock really be turned back this far on Nostra Aetate and the teachings of Vatican II?

Yes, they can. Here's the bigot himself:

I am truly, deeply ashamed of my church for this action and hope this provokes such an outcry it is reversed. These are not the words of Christ. They are the words of evil.

24 Jan 2009 01:29 pm

The View From Your Window

Tucson, Arizona, 12 pm.

24 Jan 2009 12:43 pm

Forbes' Definition Of "Liberal"

It's worth checking out:

Broadly, a "liberal' subscribes to some or all of the following: progressive income taxation; universal health care of some kind; opposition to the war in Iraq, and a certain queasiness about the war on terror; an instinctive preference for international diplomacy; the right to gay marriage; a woman's right to an abortion; environmentalism in some Kyoto Protocol-friendly form; and a rejection of the McCain-Palin ticket.

I'm included on the list. For the record, I support a flat tax and, as my liberal readers know, find progressive taxation unjust and counter-productive; I'm skeptical of universal healthcare on European lines and have long defended a free market in healthcare and pharmaceuticals; I have no queasiness in fighting a war against Jihadist terror - in fact I have long been one of the most passionate supporters of it. I just oppose the illegal use of torture, the creation of a de facto protectorate in violation of the Constitution, and war-making without prudence, strategy, foresight or any conception of winning the long war of ideas. I have long supported marriage equality - because I think the conservative values of family and responsibility should not be withheld from a small section of society and because I know that gay people are as human and as worthy of respect as anyone else; I believe all abortion to be morally wrong, but would support legal abortion in the first trimester as a concession to genuine disagreement in a multicultural society and to the rights of women to control over their own bodies; I am skeptical of cap-and-trade and Kyoto-style approaches to climate change and favor a much higher tax on gas, balanced by a cut in payroll tax, to help innovate new energy sources. Not many liberals, I wager to say, endorsed Ron Paul for president for the GOP in the primaries. Not many liberals, I dare to say, have written books on conservatism which rest on a reading of key conservative thinkers such as Burke and Oakeshott and Montaigne and Hobbes. And the conservatism I adhere to, as any reader can tell, has remained very constant for twenty years. There is very little shift in tone or argument from my first book, "Intimations Pursued," to my last, "The Conservative Soul." It spans twenty years.

Sure, I opposed the McCain-Palin ticket, although I made McCain a close second as my favorite in the primaries. No sane person, in my judgment, could have supported the farcical inclusion of an absurdly under-qualified and delusional crackpot like Palin as a potential president of the United States. That decision had nothing to do with left or right. She has no business being governor of Alaska, let alone president of the United States, as the leadership of the Alaskan GOP will tell you and a subscription to the Anchorage Daily News will prove.

None of these positions is in any way a mystery - every single one is in the public record multiple times. So why am I a liberal to these people, to someone smart and decent like Tunku Varadarajan? Why do I earn the prize of "most annoying liberal" out of countless others whose liberalism is avowed and long and uncomplicated, and none of whom supported Reagan and Thatcher and Bush in '88 and Dole and Bush in 2000? I mean: I'm more liberal than Michael Moore?

The answer, I think, is two-fold. The first is that I am openly and proudly gay - another fact that spans the last twenty years. Forbes writes the following:

His advocacy for gay marriage rights and his tendency to view virtually everything through a "gay" prism puts him at odds with many on the right.

I can see that my advocacy for marriage equality puts me at odds with Republican religious doctrine, even though, for example, I edited an anthology on the subject that took great pains to include many right-wing voices against marriage equality from Bill Bennett to Stanley Kurtz. I can see that being gay allows me a perspective sometimes not available to others. But how is my view of the Iraq war or torture or the environment or Obama or the debt or drug legalization viewed through a gay prism? Any reader of this blog or my Sunday column will instantly realize that this is absurd - "virtually everything" I write is put through a gay prism?

The real truth is that many on the Republican right just read everything I write through an anti-gay prism, because their homophobia - benign or not-so-benign, conscious or unconscious - is so overwhelming it occludes any genuine assessment of a person's thoughts outside this fact. See how Forbes cannot even keep the word gay out of quote marks. Just imagine the same sentence with the word "Jewish" replacing the word gay. It tells you everything you need to know about the moral core of conservatism today. It's sad and will one day be seen as embarrassing.

The second reason I am now labeled a "liberal" is that conservatism has become a religious movement. Although I am a religious person, I do not believe that any specific form of religion has a veto in determining who is or is not a political conservative in a secular society. I think non-believers can be conservatives - and Hindus and Muslims and Jews and Christians. The conservative political temperament is not a theological position that belongs to any denomination or God. The fact that I have been relentless and impolite in pointing this out - as the GOP has collapsed for these very reasons - suggests to me that the GOP is still more interested in persecuting critics, especially the more effective ones, than reforming for the future.

For the record: self-confident political groupings seek converts - look at Obama. Failed and failing political groupings seek to punish and list heretics. I'm resigned to being a heretic given the state of the current conservative movement. And as an independent writer, it mercifully can't hurt me much. I just don't think conservatism will revive until it stops thinking that way.

24 Jan 2009 11:28 am

Blogger Back

After a night of insane puking, a day of the other thing, and a day barely able to move, I'm back. It all seems like one of those stomach viruses that's been going around and that mercifully lasts only a few days. Thanks to Patrick and Chris who filled in for me so well. Apologies for the absence. But we're human back here. I just wish it had been another week. Just as I was feeling the relief, the nausea kicked in. Let's hope it's not an omen.

24 Jan 2009 10:50 am

Thinking Outside The Cocoon

by Patrick Appel

Frum:

Our party has been crippled by an all-pervading assumption at the center that if you just don’t talk about bad news, it will go away: whether it’s an extravagant wardrobe decision - or a bad job creation record. Our leaders cocoon themselves, refuse to hear unwelcome news, and reward yesmanship.

(hat tip: Suderman)

24 Jan 2009 10:17 am

Nobody Knows

by Patrick Appel

Tyler Cowen flags this quote from Warren Buffet on whether the stimulus will work:

The answer is nobody knows. The economists don’t know. All you know is you throw everything at it and whether it’s more effective if you’re fighting a fire to be concentrating the water flow on this part or that part. You’re going to use every weapon you have in fighting it. And people, they do not know exactly what the effects are. Economists like to talk about it, but in the end they’ve been very, very wrong and most of them in recent years on this. We don’t know the perfect answers on it. What we do know is to stand by and do nothing is a terrible mistake or to follow Hoover-like policies would be a mistake and we don’t know how effective in the short run we don’t know how effective this will be and how quickly things will right themselves. We do know over time the American machine works wonderfully and it will work wonderfully again.

24 Jan 2009 09:59 am

After The Gag Rule

by Patrick Appel

Steven Waldman sounds deflated:

I think the real significance -- and the reason pro-life Obama supporters ought to be disappointed -- is the combination of the gag rule repeal (which was expected) and the language he used in his Roe v. Wade statement [two days ago].

He did mention the goal of reducing unintended pregnancies. But keep in mind that pro-life Obama supporters believed that their big victory during the fights over the Democratic Party platform was not the language about reducing unintended pregnancies -- but rather the language about helping women carry babies to term, if that was their choice.

That thought was absent from yesterday's statement.

On the other side of the issue, Feministe blogger Cara celebrates.

24 Jan 2009 09:17 am

Why We Don't Always Write Back

by Patrick Appel
I've been reading Clay Shirky's brilliant little book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power Of Organizing Without Organizations. Here's a paragraph on internet fame that I think Andrew will appreciate when he comes back:   

Glenn Reynolds, a homegrown hero of the weblog world, reports over a million unique viewers a month for Instapundit.com, a circulation that would put him comfortably in the top twenty daily papers in the United States. You can see how interactivty is defeated by an audience of this size -- spending even as minute a month interacting with 10,000 of his readers (only one percent of his total audience) whould take forty hours a week. This is what "interactivty" looks like at this scale --no interaction at all with almost all of his audience, and infrequent and minuscule interaction with the rest...

The Dish has an audience comparable to Reynolds and we do our best to reply to as many readers' e-mails as possible, but even with Andrew and me working together we can't reply to everyone. Shirky later quotes Merlin Mann:

Continue reading "Why We Don't Always Write Back" »

24 Jan 2009 08:48 am

From Ireland to Israel

by Patrick Appel

Daniel Levy writes about George Mitchell – who is famous for negotiating peace in Northern Ireland –  being appointed to special envoy for Middle East peace. Levy sounds hopeful:

Ironically, his first challenges may comes less from the Israelis and Palestinians that he will meet on his travels and more from the skeptics and naysayers in the Middle East peace industry back home in Washington D.C. He should expect to hear lots of "it can't be done" refrains, but as Mitchell himself noted speaking in Israel just last month: "In negotiations which led up to that agreement [Good Friday agreement] we had seven hundred days of failure and one day of success." New thinking is needed and a determination to create that one day of success for Israel/Palestine.

24 Jan 2009 07:32 am

The Obameter

by Patrick Appel

Keep track of Obama's promises.

Friday, January 23, 2009

23 Jan 2009 10:25 pm

Dissent Of The Day II

by Chris Bodenner
A reader writes:

Thumbs up to you for featuring the always-amazing world of Mexican wrestling. But a couple of quibbles ...

1) First off, the WWF hasn't been called the WWF for years. They lost a lawsuit to the World Wildlife Fund and had to change their name. They're WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) now.

Continue reading "Dissent Of The Day II" »

23 Jan 2009 09:13 pm

Gitmo Detainees, American Prisons

by Patrick Appel
Greenwald joins the debate:

If it were really the goal of Terrorists to attack American prisons where their members are incarcerated and if they were actually capable of doing that, they already have a long list of "targets" and have had such a list for two decades.  If U.S. civilian courts were inadequate forums for obtaining convictions of Terrorism suspects, then the above-listed individuals would not be imprisoned -- most of them for life -- while the Guantanamo military commission system still has nothing to show for it other than a series of humiliating setbacks for the Government.  As is true for virtually every fear-mongering claim made over the last eight years to frighten Americans into believing that they must vest the Government with vast and un-American powers lest they be slaughtered by the Terrorists, none of these claims is remotely rational and all of them are empirically disproven.

23 Jan 2009 08:46 pm

"The Most Dangerous Man," Ctd.

by Patrick Appel
A reader writes:

I heard Marc Thiessen on BBC radio last night, angrily denouncing Obama's actions to the world.  What struck me most was his dishonesty. He boldly asserted that waterboarding had saved lives because regular interrogation techniques weren't working to uncover active plots.  And he insisted that we need to be able to use waterboarding when all else fails.  But he wouldn't call it torture.

Continue reading ""The Most Dangerous Man," Ctd." »

23 Jan 2009 08:25 pm

Don't Crush The Taliban?

by Patrick Appel
Steve Coll ponders the radical group:

Among other specialists and national-security types...there is a drift toward the proposition that if the Taliban is in some sense indigenous or inevitable, perhaps we should just accept our limits and let Afghans sort them out, given that the Taliban only kill “occupying” American soldiers and civilians locally, and do not operate overseas.

This line of thinking has obvious appeal after the Bush Administration’s policies of operatic overreach, but it is erroneous for two reasons.

Continue reading "Don't Crush The Taliban?" »

23 Jan 2009 08:22 pm

"The Most Dangerous Man," Ctd.

by Patrick Appel
Sargent tackles Marc Thiessen:

Here’s the thing about this. You have here an assertion that crosses over from mere opinion into verifiable or disprovable assertion. If you’re going to say that someone has already proven himself to be dangerous, as opposed to merely being potentially dangerous, you need to point to empirical evidence of this, such as lives lost to foreign threats on your watch. There haven’t been any such lives lost under President Obama yet, unlike other past Presidents.

23 Jan 2009 08:06 pm

"Job Creation Is Strong"

by Patrick Appel
The National Republican National Committee is behind the times.

23 Jan 2009 07:49 pm

Where The Evidence Leads

by Patrick Appel

Hilzoy whacks Cornyn for delaying Holder's appointment to Attorney General. Cornyn has said that, "Part of my concern, frankly, relates to some of [Holder's] statements at the hearing in regard to torture and what his intentions are with regard to intelligence personnel who were operating in good faith based upon their understanding of what the law was." Hilzoy:

If John Cornyn and his colleagues meant to immunize intelligence officials for whatever they did, they should have passed a law saying so. If they wanted to immunize intelligence officials for doing anything that the Bush administration said was OK, however implausible the administration's claims might be, they should have passed a law saying that. And if they wanted to add a codicil saying: "For the purposes of this statute, the practice known as 'waterboarding' is not a form of torture", they should have done that.

Continue reading "Where The Evidence Leads" »

23 Jan 2009 07:22 pm

Google-pedia, Ctd.

by Patrick Appel
A reader writes:

The Web-Google-Wikipedia monoculture may, in fact, be a bad thing, or at least a phenomena of high risk and negative side-effects, but to call it a "fundamental failure of the Web as an information-delivery service" is to show a fundamental lack of understanding of how systems work. Systemic integration always comes at the price of the diversity that emerges within isolated niches.

Continue reading "Google-pedia, Ctd." »

23 Jan 2009 06:44 pm

Face Of The Day

Pro-life activist Sarah Brown of Fredricksburg, Virginia, says a prayer in front of the U.S. Supreme Court during the annual 'March for Life' event January 22, 2009 in Washington, DC. The event was to mark the anniversary of the 1973 Roe v Wade Supreme Court abortion ruling. By Alex Wong/Getty.

23 Jan 2009 06:25 pm

Cool Ad Watch

by Chris Bodenner
It's for a sound production company:

23 Jan 2009 06:20 pm

It's Good To Have Company

by Patrick Appel
Ta-Nehisi joins me in hating the "I pledge" video.

23 Jan 2009 05:34 pm

Quote For The Day II

by Chris Bodenner
"Listen, I think the world of Governor Palin. ... Look, whenever there's a losing campaign, there's always a little bit of back and forth that happens postmortem. Uh, look, I'm so grateful to have her as a friend. ... I think she has a big role to play [in the GOP]. ... But let me just say, I don't know who’s running and all that, but I will always be grateful to Sarah Palin for her friendship and her strong principles and leadership," John McCain, asked if he would support his 2008 running mate for president in 2012.

(Hat tip: Christopher Orr)
 

23 Jan 2009 05:29 pm

Running On Empty

by Patrick Appel
The Hudson Institute's Jaime Daremblum explores the impact of plunging oil prices on Venezuela and concludes that Hugo Chavez is weakened but still dangerous:

The bad news for Venezuelans is that their president wasted an unprecedented opportunity during the oil boom and their economy is now in shambles. The good news for U.S. policymakers and democratic officials in Latin America is that Chávez will now have less ability to foment political strife abroad and undermine regional democracies. His stature has been diminished, and his popularity at home has fallen. As CIA Director Michael Hayden said last week, the massive decline in oil prices could mean “real trouble” for Chávez.

23 Jan 2009 05:09 pm

"Selling A Message"

by Patrick Appel

Marc Lynch is worried by the rumors that Hillary Clinton will tap longtime friend and Democratic mega-donor Judith Hale as her undersecretary for public diplomacy:

...the position of Under-Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs should go to someone with experience in and a vision for public diplomacy, and who will be in a position to effectively integrate public diplomacy concerns into the policy-making process.  Appointing someone with no experience in public diplomacy but with a resume which "involves selling a message" has already been tried: the first post-9/11 Under-Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Charlotte Beers, whose tenure lasted only 17 months (October 2001-March 2003), focused on "branding" America through television advertising showing happy Muslim-Americans, and is generally considered to be an utter failure.

23 Jan 2009 04:49 pm

Quote For The Day

by Chris Bodenner
"Dec. 9 to my family, to us, to me, is what Pearl Harbor Day was to the United States.  It was a complete surprise, completely unexpected.  And just like the United States prevailed in that, we'll prevail in this," - patriot Rod Blagojevich, still suffering from the amnesia caused by that dastardly deed.

23 Jan 2009 04:20 pm

Mental Health Break

by Chris Bodenner
The WWF's got nothing on these guys:

23 Jan 2009 04:10 pm

Ending The Culture Wars?

by Patrick Appel
Yesterday was the anniversary of Roe. Amy Sullivan notices that Obama didn't repeal the Mexico City Policy, the "ban on federal money to NGOs that provide abortions abroad." Repealing the ban was one of Bill Clinton's first acts as president and reinstating the ban was one of Bush's. Sullivan speculates:

Everyone knows he still plans on repealing the ban. But it was an interesting and important decision not to make that move on such a politically-charged day. Clinton entered the White House having tempered the skepticism of many pro-life voters with his insistence that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare." His decision to make repealing the Mexico City ban one of his very first acts in office led many to wonder if the slogan was just that--a slogan. I suspect that when Obama does issue the executive order regarding the Mexico City policy, it will be followed by concrete action to support abortion reduction.

I don't know about that.

23 Jan 2009 03:56 pm

Brownback's Lamest Reason Yet, Ctd.

by Patrick Appel
A reader writes:

The US Army Command and General Staff College is only one of dozens of American military-educational institutions that enroll students from Muslim countries.  For Brownback to claim that Leavenworth is where "these relationships are built with foreign officers, particularly in the Islamic world"  -- as if that happens at Leavenworth alone -- could charitably be described as disingenuous, though "stupid" is probably a more accurate term.

Continue reading "Brownback's Lamest Reason Yet, Ctd." »

23 Jan 2009 03:55 pm

Is Kristol Learning Photoshop?

by Chris Bodenner
First he writes this, then we find this.

(Hat tip: Buzzfeed)

23 Jan 2009 03:34 pm

A Good Reason Against The Transfer

by Chris Bodenner
One of the Army veterans I know in Leavenworth says he's opposed to the detainee transfer, in part, because the mere presence of foreign enemies conjures up bad memories from his tour in Iraq.  Working there as an MP, he dealt with many dangerous prisoners, and just wants to leave the whole experience behind him. For him, Leavenworth is a place of solace.

23 Jan 2009 03:32 pm

The Future Of Books

by Patrick Appel
Robert Darnton studies the settlement allowing Google to digitize thousands and thousands of books:

No one can predict what will happen. We can only read the terms of the settlement and guess about the future. If Google makes available, at a reasonable price, the combined holdings of all the major US libraries, who would not applaud? Would we not prefer a world in which this immense corpus of digitized books is accessible, even at a high price, to one in which it did not exist?

Perhaps, but the settlement creates a fundamental change in the digital world by consolidating power in the hands of one company.

Continue reading "The Future Of Books" »

23 Jan 2009 03:03 pm

Brownback's Lamest Reason Yet

by Chris Bodenner
He's worried that Muslim countries might pull their students out of CGSC, the officer college on Ft. Leavenworth (where, incidentally, my father taught for six years):

“We’ve already heard from students from Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia that they will leave, or be pulled by their governments, if the detainees from Guantanamo are moved there,” Brownback said. “It’s where these relationships are built with foreign officers, particularly in the Islamic world. This really hurts us.”

Of the more than 1,000 officers who cycle through CGSC every year, only about 50 of them are foreign, and only a fraction of them come from Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.  While any disruption to CGSC's curriculum is unfortunate, a few-person boycott would pale in comparison to the issue of our detainee policy and how the rest of the world sees it.

Continue reading "Brownback's Lamest Reason Yet" »

23 Jan 2009 02:56 pm

"The Most Dangerous Man"

by Patrick Appel
Marc Thiessen, a speechwriter for W., is pissed by Obama's executive orders:

The CIA program he is effectively shutting down is the reason why America has not been attacked again after 9/11. He has removed the tool that is singularly responsible for stopping al-Qaeda from flying planes into the Library Tower in Los Angeles, Heathrow Airport, and London’s Canary Warf, and blowing up apartment buildings in Chicago, among other plots.  It’s not even the end of inauguration week, and Obama is already proving to be the most dangerous man ever to occupy the Oval Office.

If this is true, why not set up a commission?

23 Jan 2009 02:44 pm

The View From Your Window

Northfield, Minnesota, 9.16 am.

23 Jan 2009 02:24 pm

Not Making Waves

by Patrick Appel
Manzi:

Obama won by 7 points; FDR by 18. Obama’s talk of boldness, without actual bold proposals, is likely a reflection of his awareness of this hard fact. This is probably a reason that he is willing to yield so far on tax relief in the stimulus package, as an example. If a depression-level event unfolds over the next four years and he is seen as pushing an agenda in opposition to the other party, he will be vulnerable in a way that FDR was not almost no matter what happened.

23 Jan 2009 02:06 pm

Andrew Is A Liberal?

by Patrick Appel
According to Forbes he is. I imagine he will have something to say about this when he gets back. Gerald Seib and a few others will also be surprised to find themselves on this list.

23 Jan 2009 01:37 pm

Tanked

by Chris Bodenner
First Diane Sawyer, now Anderson Cooper?  It's kinda hard to fight all those "in-the-tank-for-Obama" accusations when the entire press corps is drunk for inauguration.

23 Jan 2009 01:35 pm

The Costs Of War

by Patrick Appel
A snippet from the "Cost of Conflict in the Middle East," a report (pdf) by the Strategic Foresight Group:

The countries in the Middle East that are directly involved in or affected by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, internal strife in Lebanon and the U.S. invasion of Iraq have lost a whopping $12 trillion dollars (in 2006 dollar value) in opportunity costs from 1991 to 2010.

Grunstein comments:

I'm not sure if the vision of how things could be is enough to get people to come to their senses. But the fact that the Middle East is not a prosperous global power center is one of the most prominent and enduring testaments to human irrationality that I can think of.

23 Jan 2009 01:19 pm

A Printed Blog

by Patrick Appel
The internet comes full circle.

23 Jan 2009 01:08 pm

Better Than 'Foggy Bottom'

by Chris Bodenner
Uncovering the naughty names of British towns.

23 Jan 2009 12:49 pm

What's Cheaper?

by Patrick Appel
Tyler Cowen a post on the perils of bank nationalization over at the Atlantic's new business channel:

The risk is that nationalization becomes a contagious idea and spreads from one bank to the next, acting as a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Even mentioning "the N word" scares off private capital, so if the government is not going to nationalize, a precommittment to that effect would be useful.  Either that, or get it over with.

Subsidies and bailouts, of course, have their own problems, most of all that they cost money.  But it also costs money to recapitalize a nationalized banking system.  I've yet to see the evidence that the nationalization option would be cheaper.  And if nationalization increases the number of banks that require assistance, one way or the other, it could well prove more expensive in the longer run.

23 Jan 2009 12:46 pm

How's The Disher?

by Patrick Appel
Many readers have written to see how Andrew is doing. I spoke with him on the phone a minute ago. He had a 48 hour bug but is over the worst of it and thinks that he will be back tonight or tomorrow morning.