Month: September 2009

David makes several points in response to the Dish's debate on his column:

One important thing to keep in mind is that these sizable inflation-adjusted pay gains probably won't last for nearly as long as they did in the late 1990s. They're driven mostly by negative inflation, and inflation now appears to be rising. There's more detail in this post.  I realize that it's hard for many people to believe their real wages have risen. But the numbers are what they are. The trend is there whether you look at hourly data or weekly data, contrary to what Dean

Baker implies. 

It's there whether you look at the latest month-to-month data or at year-over-year data. It's there whether you look at only cash pay or total compensation (including benefits). It's there whether you look at one government survey or another. Nominal hourly pay for rank-and-file workers was rising at a modest pace throughout 2008 and early 2009. It was rising only ever so slowly in the spring of 2009 (and, because inflation was bouncing around, nominal wage growth did fall behind inflation during this period). But in the last two months, wages rose at a modest pace again. Since inflation has been negative for most of the past year, the net result has been surprisingly large real pay gains.

Economic historians have pointed out that a similar thing happened during the deflation of the Great Depression — for those people lucky enough to be employed. As I say, these kinds of gains aren't likely to last. But I think it'd be a lot worse if real wages for most families had already been falling over the past 20 months of recession.

Joshua Keating explains:

In what looks like a home-made YouTube video, a young Danish woman appeals to the father of "August," a newborn baby conceived in a one-night-stand with a foreign tourist. The woman is actually an actress and the video was produced by the Danish tourist board, which has since removed it from their site after complaints that they were depicting Danes as promiscuous. Believe me, I get what they're trying to sell, and they're hardly the first country to use the promise of vacation sex (admittedly it's usually slightly more subtle) as a selling point. But did anyone really think this painfully awkward 2 1/2 minute monologue would be enticing to anyone?

Some tough criteria here:

The good news is that success in war is a lot like pornography—you know it when you see it … If Americans (and others) see violence decreasing and the Taliban on the run, they will know the war is a success. If not, then the war will be a judged a failure.

What does he mean: will be judged a failure? US troops have now been fighting this amorphous enemy for almost eight years. And we're still asking if this war is a success or failure? 

The premise of Boot's worldview is that the US is responsible for security in every failed state that Jihadists could control or exploit. This logic is a kind of extension of the one percent doctrine: Since another 9/11 can come from anywhere, the US needs to occupy as many places as possible to prevent it. The fact that this can actually create more Jihadism does not seem to have occurred to these people. But, remember, they all assured us that there was WMD stockpiles in Iraq, that the insurgency didn't exist, and that sectarianism had long since died out under Saddam. They obviously have no idea what they're talking about – and more young American and British soldiers are being killed.

There is, moroever, never any consideration in neoconservative circles of whether the US in its current economic state can afford such an open-ended, nation-building neo-imperial project. They're apoplectic at the thought that some middle class workers might get a crack at health insurance for fiscal reasons. But endless empire? Just sign the checks.

And at any moment that a sane and sober appraisal of US interests is proffered, we get two answers: the next 9/11 will be your fault; and withdrawal will be a p.r. boon to al Qaeda. This is – how to put it? – getting tiresome.

Noah Millman explains.

Obama extended the Cuba embargo a few days ago. Armchair Generalist sighs:

It's disappointing that the president would fall back on the easy way out – extending a bad policy instead of making a difference. But I suppose with all the nut cases out there yelling about "fascist socialist capitalism" and the health care reform, maybe now isn't the best time. But it's more than time for us to see a change from the last administration, no?

Delayed gratification never looked so cute:

Were Frum and Perle once on the list? "Every book gets the readers it deserves."

It's often about actually fomenting social problems, and the breakdown of families, rather than the encouragement of virtue. Why? In a word, fundamentalism:

Strayhorn compiled data from various data sets. The religiosity information came from a sample of nearly 36,000 participants who were part of the U.S. Religious Landscapes Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life conducted in 2007, while the teen birth and abortion statistics came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For religiosity, the researchers averaged the percentage of respondents who agreed with conservative responses to eight statements, including: ''There is only one way to interpret the teachings of my religion," and ''Scripture should be taken literally, word for word."

They found a strong correlation between statewide conservative religiousness and statewide teen birth rate even when they accounted for income and abortion rates.

One should remember that the very people who attack gay people for forming relationships and building families are the ones most responsible for teen births. Sarah Palin's pattern is not anomalous.

With his usual bluntness, Derbyshire explains the real war aims of the Afghan occupation:

To bribe the damn Afghans to behave themselves for long enough that we can get out of there with some dignity? Seems to be working in Iraq.