Month: July 2008

A drunk Swede rows home … from Denmark:

Danish coast guard officials said they found the man still asleep inside the boat after they received reports of what appeared to be an abandoned dinghy adrift in the strait, which is a popular shipping lane.

If that’s the criterion for success in the war on terror, wouldn’t it apply to Bill Clinton as well as George W. Bush? Bainbridge explains.

Saletan considers animal rights and the "myth of animal equality":

Opening your mind to science-based animal rights doesn’t eliminate inequality. It just makes the inequality more scientific. A rat can’t match a pig, much less a boy.

And it’s a continuum, right? Hence Spain’s new law defending ape rights:

GAP is scientifically honest. And science doesn’t show mental parity between great apes and human adults. What it shows, as the group’s president acknowledges, is that great apes "experience an emotional and intellectual conscience similar to that of human children." Accordingly, the Spanish proposal doesn’t treat apes like you or me. It treats them like "humans of limited capacity, such as children or those who are mentally incompetent and are afforded guardians or caretakers to represent their interests."

I understand the intuition that humans are different in kind than animals. But science won’t allow such absolute categories.

That’ll teach him for advertizing on pro-Clinton websites.

Or something like that:

It didn’t work for Ferraro because both her point, and the way she went about making and restating it, were outlandish. But so far it seems to be working for Wesley Clark. He’s not backing down, and the debate about whether McCain’s service is an automatic qualification for being president is now in its second day.

So just to be clear: Wesley Clark isn’t trying to Swift Boat John McCain. That’s so 2004. He’s trying to Ferraro John McCain. And so far he’s proving to be more skilled at it than Ferraro ever was.

"The point is this – and the story is quite familiar already: the netroots become enamored with a particular candidate. Said candidate does something contrary to what conventional wisdom as dictated by a small coterie of prominent bloggers agrees with. Netroots becomes angry, throws up hands in the air, pounds keyboards angrily, fills up pixels with frustration, and does very little to influence the debate… In short, grow the hell up. If you can’t get over being disappointed by your candidate in politics…well, you’re going to be disappointed virtually all the time," – Kos blogger, Psifighter37.

Some brand-name bullet-proof outfits for DC life.

Because he’s been too successful, I guess. The impact of Obama’s tax proposals:

It was fortunate for Tiger that his most-recent U.S. Open win occurred in 2008. Under twin tax proposals from Obama to 1) remove the "cap" from Social Security taxes for individuals earning over $250,000, a plateau Tiger has long since surpassed in 2008, and 2) eliminate the "Bush" tax cuts, thereby raising the top marginal federal income tax rate to 39.6%, Tiger’s taxes on his winner’s check would have increased to approximately $776,000, a boost of almost $190,000. Instead of Tiger keeping 57% of his earnings and the government taking 43%, under the twin Obama tax proposals, Tiger’s federal and California taxes would have amounted to 57% of his winnings, leaving Tiger with just 43%

(Hat tip: TaxProf)

Rich Lowry passes on some dire news for McCain:

Voters who are undecided in their vote for President are unfavorable to President Bush by a greater than 2:1 margin; or 26% favorable to 60% unfavorable. Voters who are undecided in the generic ballot for Congress also have a majority unfavorable opinion of President Bush – 29% favorable / 56% unfavorable.

And Obama is already well ahead among those who have decided. We’re looking at the fruition of Karl Rove’s tactics: a potentially historic wipe-out of the GOP.

Jeffery Goldberg on Shelby Steele’s talk:

Steele is arguing for the end of white guilt, which is something legitimate to argue about, but now he’s saying that America conducts itself with excessive politesse in Middle East war zones because of white guilt. And I always thought we tried to respect human rights whenever possible because it’s the right thing to do, and, by the way, slaughtering people indiscriminately doesn’t tend to win over the people you let live.

Yglesias’s take:

I thought he went awry by alleging that we’ve been overly “sensitive” in our conduct of war recently for reasons of white guilt and that this is why we’re bogged down in Iraq — too much focus on the legitimacy of our efforts, and not enough focus on “winning.” I think this mostly shows that Steele has a lot more background in social policy than in military policy.