Month: November 2009

After reading an excerpt from Palin's book, Althouse concludes:

It seems that Sarah Palin wasn't able or didn't want to bother to analyze whether she was ready to debut on the big media stage, and she wasn't large-minded enough to think beyond herself to what it would mean for the whole campaign. That is, she was dumb. She was too dumb to handle campaign responsibilities properly, so she was clearly too dumb to step into the role of President of the United States.

Could she build up her political intelligence? Might she have it now or by 2012? If these 2 pages of  "Going Rogue" are any evidence, she is displaying her weaknesses all over again, and she is still too dumb to be President. And, most scarily, she doesn't know how dumb she still is.

Ambers take on giving US trials to KSM and other terrorists:

If this is politics, it's really dumb politics. And that's why it's probably not politics. Occam's razor applies. Obama and Holder are sincerely — perhaps naively, but that's something we won't know for a while — attempting to change the way the American people and the world think about counterterrorism.

They want to change the narrative from a "strength/weakness" metaphor to an "example/rule of law" metaphor. This sounds a little PoMo, but it's the mark of a president who, on this issue in particular, does not believe that the old ways of thinking make America any safer. Certainly, they don't contribute to a national security politics of consensus.

This will be a hard sell. The chief GOP arguments — that terrorists don't deserve the same rights as Americans — even common criminals — and that the 9/11 terrorists are inherently of a different and more nefarious breed of species than people who break the law — are generally supported by Americans.

Jeffrey Rosen finds it unlikely that the Supreme Court would interfere with the Stupak amendment, should it pass:

[A]bortion is one area where the common ground Obama seeks may not exist. In that case, the president may conclude, like Nancy Pelosi, that it’s not worth sacrificing health care reform over an important but ultimately peripheral battle in the culture wars. If giving millions of uninsured women access to life-saving procedures like dialysis and chemotherapy requires making it harder for a much smaller number of self-insured women to get abortion coverage, the pragmatic calculation is understandable. But that doesn’t make it any less frustrating.

Ezra Klein is more worried about the possible long-term consequences.

Land mass and population by country.

A Sudanese rapper has to start somewhere:

Many are speculating that Palin is trying to deprive DC insiders their ritual of jumping to the index of a new book to spot their own names. But Samuel P. Jacobs puts forth a simpler reason:

[T]ime. It takes two to three weeks to put together a good index, says Peter Osnos, the founder of Public Affairs, who has published Bill Clinton, Vernon Jordan, Scott McClellan, and nearly every other Washington macher over the years. Cutting an index can mean the difference between getting a book into stores well before Thanksgiving or missing the holiday sales season altogether. Speed is at an even greater premium now, in the age of e-books and instant downloads on the Kindle.

As Uganda's government passes laws and issues statements about homosexuals that are reminiscent of genocidal governments in the past, should the US continue to give the government funds to combat AIDS and HIV? Charles Francis argues that we need to rethink:

This is a critical juncture for PEPFAR before the world community. Will

we stand by and let national governments scapegoat a sexual minority for HIV/AIDS while receiving major funding for AIDS relief? Will the U.S. fund radical, anti-gay prevention programs that could become a

model for other parliaments and governments? 

“Verbal assault” is not individual expression of political opinion or free expression of strong differences in civil society. “Verbal assault” is designed by government — and promoted by government — to instill fear, divert people with scapegoats, galvanize electoral majorities and to accrue power by creating a pariah, a man or woman who is made “socially dead” (Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners).

If not checked, verbal assault leads to physical violence and imprisonment. PEPFAR must call for a cessation, through diplomatic and public channels, of the verbal and legislative assault on African gays. Similarly, in a “multi-partner world”, PEPFAR partners — businesses, foundations, universities and faith-based partners — need to come forward and make their views known. Silence is a form of passive assent in this situation.

Lane Kensworthy sums up a primary argument of Bruce Bartlett's new book:

The chief economic problem we now face, in Bartlett’s view, is not high marginal tax rates. It is the aging of baby boomers to whom we have made Medicare and Social Security commitments. Absent “massive and politically impossible cuts,” this will cause federal government expenditures to rise from 20% of GDP to around 30% over the coming generation. Supply-side dogma leaves Republicans ill-prepared for this challenge. “When the crunch comes and the need for a major increase in revenue becomes overwhelming,” says Bartlett, “I expect that Republicans will refuse to participate in the process. If Democrats have to raise taxes with no bipartisan support, then they will have no choice but to cater to the demands of their party’s most liberal wing. This will mean higher rates on businesses and entrepreneurs, and soak-the-rich policies that would make Franklin D. Roosevelt blush.”

A better result, according to Bartlett, would be to bring government revenues into line with projected expenditures via a value-added tax (VAT), a type of consumption tax. Heavy use of VATs is a key reason, he says, why “many European countries have tax/GDP ratios far higher than here without suffering particularly ill effects. They may not be growing as fast as they would if taxes and spending were lower, but neither are their standards of living significantly below those of the United States. Even strenuous efforts to show that Europeans are poorer than Americans show that the differences are merely trivial.”

Dave Bry scratches his head:

What exactly is going on in that new Kodak Gallery commercial? A creepy piano tinkles as a little girl and a grandma shout to each other across the span of an absurdly large couch. Little girl says something stupid, grandma laughs at her stupidity. But the mood darkens when little girl asks grandma, “Were you ever in love?” Grandma answers with a cryptic, “Well…” The music intensifies, takes on an almost maniacal quality. Then the little girl says something about magic sea horses, grandma seems confused and, wait a minute—that couch is definitely getting smaller! Is this like an Alice In Wonderland thing? Or they’re trying to convey the horror of senile dementia? Or, wait, is the grandma supposed to be a ghost? Are they both ghosts? Is this a commercial about the victims of some grisly, long-ago mass-murder coming back to haunt the living?