Month: September 2009

Will Wilkinson says Jonathan Chait is misrepresenting Ayn Rand:

I’m more than willing to snicker right along with Chait at ridiculously puffed-up computer engineers who threaten to “Go Galt” at the first hint of an impending tax hike while blithely enjoying the wage subsidy of the United State’s super-stingy H1-B visa cap. But he’s really just careless in conflating the views of Ayn Rand’s confused fans with Ayn Rand’s own. I’m delighted there are two important new books that take Rand seriously as a woman, writer, and thinker. It’s too bad that Chait uses their publication as an occasion to once again take a brave stand for the redistributive state.

Ackerman reads through the new AfPak metrics (acquired by The Cable):

Most of these look unfamiliar to the benchmarks established for Iraq in 2007, which included such granular measurements as electricity kilowatt-hours and sectarian-caused deaths and so forth. That’s what happens when Congress lets the administration write its own benchmarks instead of writing them for it.

DiA yawns:

These are all fine metrics. But they also seem like completely obvious metrics. This is what we waited all this time for? These are the brilliant output-oriented metrics that are going to tell us whether we're winning the war in Afghanistan? Explain to me why I should be impressed.

Nick Cullather thinks Norman Borlaug's legacy is much more complicated than has been reported:

Another Nobelist, Amartya Sen, convincingly refuted the claim that either food supply or population had anything to do with famine.  Famines regularly occurred at times and places where food was plentiful, and in the most thinly populated places, like Darfur.  But while Borlaug had little respect for the doomsayers, their prophecies were the best justification for a second green revolution for Africa, which Borlaug campaigned for alone before gaining the support of the Rockefeller and Gates foundations and the Obama administration.  Africa produces enough to feed itself and Europe; no French market would be complete without citrus from Ghana, cut flowers from Kenya, or lobster from Mozambique.  But because it is poor, it also receives millions in U.S. food aid, generosity which discourages local farmers from growing cheap grain for local consumption, just as it did in Asia in the 1960s.  A new scientific push is needed, the foundations claim, to save “tens of millions of people who are living on the brink of starvation in sub-Saharan Africa.”

San Francisco, California, 7.15 am

Julian Sanchez adds to this post by Thoreau:

It’s [Muslim] urbanites and cosmopolitans who are most likely to come into contact with the many variations between the local versions of Islam. Now, if you’re a believer convinced that there’s one uniquely authoritative set of commands and practices that have been divinely ordained, this can provoke enormous cognitive dissonance—and prompt a search for the “true” version of Islam purged of all these regional variations. Insofar as this also purges the system of its evolved adaptations, the result is apt to be more radical, and potentially more dangerous.

The results in Afghanistan and Iran do not bode well. Lynch worries:

The timing of U.S. troop withdrawals was explicitly designed around the perceived need to keep a larger troop presence through the elections to provide security.  The implicit premise has always been that once those elections are held, the security problems will recede and a more rapid withdrawal could commence. I've always questioned those assumptions — both that a large U.S. troop presence would play an important or positive role in the Iraqi elections, and that the election would be a decisive moment which would transform the security calculus.

A reader writes:

After September 11th, Bush's approval ratings were near or above 90%. Practically the entire country was behind him – saluting and ready for duty.

Yes, the Left did try to derail his plans for Iraq – but they failed. And when millions (actual millions) of Americans came out to protest that war – – it was largely ignored by the media. But when 70,000 lunatics came to DC last week to protest "Government Spending" (which, let's be honest, is a euphemism for "Barack Hussein Obama") – they got massive amounts of media coverage and hours of pundit commentary. 

Every tea-party rally has been aggressively championed, and all-but-sponsored, by cable-news giant FOX. CODE PINK was almost completely ignored (which, as a liberal, I'm kinda glad about — but I still stand behind my larger point). A couple went to a Bush rally wearing anti-Bush T-Shirts and got arrested. Guys standing outside Obama rallies openly carry guns and get interviewed by the media.

The heaviest hitters in the Republican party, and in the conservative media have loudly and proudly called for Obama's failure. Liberals who even softly criticized Bush were roundly shamed and called terrorist-loving-America-haters. George W. Bush, despite the controversial beginning of his presidency, was given the chance – – no, in fact, after 9/11, he was given all the unopposed freedom in the world to succeed or fail based upon his own decisions and his own performance. Bush EARNED his hatred.

Obama has not had that luxury.

He also does not have the luxury of the Clinton inheritance. He was left with a steaming pile of doo-doo and a debt already in the stratosphere. And yet they also blame him for that.

Roubini sees danger ahead:

The problem is that most economies are now barely bottoming out, so reversing the fiscal and monetary stimulus too soon – before private demand has recovered more robustly – could tip these economies back into deflation and recession. Japan made that mistake between 1998 and 2000, just as the United States did between 1937 and 1939.

But if governments maintain large budget deficits and continue to monetize them as they have been doing, at some point – after the current deflationary forces become more subdued – bond markets will revolt. When that happens, inflationary expectations will mount, long-term government bond yields will rise, mortgage rates and private market rates will increase, and one would end up with stagflation (inflation and recession).

Always looking on the bright side is our Nouriel. But of course, he's right. The question is how to pivot and when.

Obama's deepest resource: family.

The pioneer of the anti-Jihadist blog, Little Green Footballs, is repulsed by some of the developments on the populist, racist right. He's right to be; and has the courage to say so. For that he is subjected to the usual mau-mauing. Check out his blog. It's an Yglesias Award in motion.