Month: November 2008

The IAEA never looked so hip.

Some alternative bail-out provisions.

Alex Tabarrok notes that Singapore is now allowing compensation for kidneys. And Stephen Dubner summarizes a study on organ donation by a team of Harvard University researchers:

…in a nutshell: The people who receive donated organs in the U.S. nearly always have health insurance, while a significant fraction of the people who donate the organs do not. In other words: poorer people are more willing to give organs than they are likely to receive them.

…Anti-market arguments usually include the concern that poor people would be compelled to sell organs while rich people never would. As true as this may be — may be — it ignores what is to me the more salient point: a market would also give many more poor people the opportunity to get organs, not just give them.

Joyner responds to my post:

The main advantage magazines have over blogs, it seems to me, is institutional gravitas.  Television and radio bookers, publishing houses, opinion columnists, mainstream journalists, and other influence leaders are far, far more likely to turn to someone with the imprimatur of an institution that to a self-published blogger….Ultimately, it’s television that matters if you’re trying to get the word out.  Bill Kristol, George Will, Bob Novak, and others have had much more impact with their on air commentary than for their written work.  Indeed, most viewers are only casually aware that these people have columns at all.

But the gravitas is an anachronistic chimera, and will soon fade. The problem here are lazy bookers on TV. Eventually, they’ll wake up and find people who are more than Potemkin pundits on the speaking circuit.

He gets all excitable:

Her uncommon understanding of the Middle East could truly revive peacemaking.

It is an inspired idea for all sorts of reasons – both in terms of domestic politics and in assembling simply the best team Obama can get to tackle the deepest crisis this country has faced since the 1970s.

It seems that the right-wing blogger was immune to the irony in my post about Cheney that noted he was indicted for "abuse of prisoners." The entire post is as follows:

Cheney Indicted. For abuse of prisoners. And some don’t believe God exists.

Patterico describes this obviously wry remark thus: "Anderson Sullivan"; "shrieking, hysterical"; "wets his pants". Drudge had the same headline, without the deadpan commentary. Was he shrieking and hysterical? The commenters chime in:

Sullivan will have that nervous breakdown he’s been building towards and cease blogging to open that think tank/t-shirt shop that P-town so desperately needs.

Oh, I don’t think that Mr. Sullivan is wetting his pants, exactly.  Not in the sense you mean it.

Shouldn’t his nickname be something more up to date at this point – like, say – Mr. Iron Glutes?

Sullivan has a permanent man-crush on Barack Obama.
 

I don’t have anything against insane, middle-aged, gay guys … and I don’t ever want to.

       

Criticize me all you want. But why is this fourth grade homophobic crap the first thing that always comes into their minds?

Contra Parker, Larison doesn’t like how the Evangelicals are scapegoated:

Certainly there is an argument to be made that dead-end partisans qua dead-end partisans who cannot speak to anyone outside their party are a problem, and you can make the case that the holdouts who still think Bush has done a good job are complicit to some degree in all of his errors and crimes. Maybe there is some significant overlap with the so-called “oogedy-boogedy” set, but then the problem with them wouldn’t be their religiosity or their social conservatism or any of the cultural markers that freaked out every pundit east of the Appalachians when Mike Huckabee would start to speak. Instead, the problem is that they were too wedded to the Bush administration and its failed record, and they were too dependent on reciting the trite slogans they heard on the radio and read in syndicated conservative columns.

And why were they so trusting of Bush and unable to see his flaws, Daniel? You have to see the link between the fundamentalist psyche and the suspension of critical judgment in the Republican party for the past eight years. A non-born-again president would never have been allowed to get away with it.

Nate Silver has an entertaining interview with John Ziegler about the Zogby "Push Poll" he commissioned. Ziegler is a documentary filmmaker who is promoting the anti-Obama movie How Obama Got Elected. Background here and here.

They’re building a two-line subway system in Baghdad, which is a) a sign that things really are turning around; b) the biggest corruption scam in even Iraq’s history; or c) insane.

It isn’t gone yet, but the Congressional and legislative hard work to repeal the U.S.’s anachronistic ban on HIV-positive tourists and immigrants deserves to be honored. So I’m hosting a fundraiser to thank Senators John Kerry and Gordon Smith (a Republican who deserved to be re-elected and wasn’t) at my place on World AIDS Day, December 1. The event will raise money for Immigration Equality, the group primarily responsible for the repeal, that has now opened a new office in DC to advance the cause of equal treatment for gay and straight couples in immigration law.

My place is a loft, and space is limited, so there’s a $1,000 minimum. But it’s for a great cause that many of you supported earlier this year with emails and online activism. If you’d like to come, email Win Chesson. His email address is wchesson@immigrationequality.org. This battle for equality is still barely begun. Helping one of the most effective and resourceful groups is one way to help win it.