Month: December 2009

What about the oyster guy?

The AP reports:

[Afghan President Hamid Karzai] said it will be at least 15 years before his government can bankroll a security force strong enough to protect the country from the threat of insurgency.

(Hat tip: Joe Klein)

Noah Pollak sees things roughly the way I do but puts more flesh on the bones (and keeps his own position somewhat veiled):

It’s clear at this point that the Obama administration has reconciled itself to a nuclear Iran and even, I think, convinced itself that this won’t be such a bad thing. After all, China opened up to the West after it went nuclear. We dealt with the Russians after they went nuclear. The Indians and Pakistanis haven’t nuked each other, despite Kashmir and all the terrorism. Neither has Israel used nukes, for that matter.

In fact, Iran going nuclear might help remove the chip on the shoulder of the Islamic Revolutionaries by making them feel as important as they hope to be — because as we all know from our Iran experts, there’s an important psychological dimension to all of this; one must understand the legacy of colonialism and imperialism. The nuclear program will really be a socialization program, in other words. It is how Iran will be broken to the saddle of the international system.

So, if you’ve reconciled yourself to all of that, the next step is ensuring the smooth transition of the Middle East into a region with two, not one, nuclear powers. This is where the Israelis, and Israeli power, become a huge problem. Such a problem, I think, that the real challenge for Obama over the next year isn’t going to be dealing with the Iranians, it’s going to be deterring the Israelis.

Ross gives two readings of the dropping divorce rate. His more pessimistic angle:

[W]hile some upper-middle class marriages may be strengthened, on the margins, by the recession, working class marriages are more likely to be weakened, even as the continued decline of the manufacturing sector makes men without college degrees less marriageable to begin with. We already have a large “marriage gap” between well-educated and less-educated Americans; the recession is likely to widen it. And once it’s over, as Hanna Rosin suggests, the working class may look that much more “like the inner city—a matriarchy with struggling mothers and drifting men and unmoored children.”

In light of Huckabee's clemency scandal, Radley Balko zooms out and considers the issue more generally:

The wisdom of a pardon or clemency granted because a particular verdict, sentence, or application of the law was unjust ought to be judged on precisely that, and only that—whether the final outcome is consistent with our notion of justice. What happens later is irrelevant. On the other hand, when a governor pardons or frees on rehabilitation grounds someone who unquestionably committed the crime, he's made a bolder proclamation, and put his own judgment on the line. If you're going to pronounce a convicted murderer redeemed by letting him out of prison, you really should be on the hook for the killer's behavior for the rest of his life.

DiA weighs in on the interview with a suicide bomber:

Mr Sullivan calls this an interview with "evil", but that is an abstract way of looking at it. Although the would-be terrorist's answers may sound absurd, he appears to be a very rational actor (based on what he believes) who is not accustomed to being confronted with dissonance-causing information. (An interesting paper from earlier this year looked into the rationality of suicide bombers.)

Steven Teles joins the carbon tax vs. cap and trade debate:

Some people assume that because the actual incidence of cap and trade and a carbon tax are the same, that the political bargains that would be necessary to get them through are the same. I disagree, strongly, because all of the evidence of the policymaking literature suggests that policy design actually matters, even when holding the actual substance of policy constant.

Today on the Dish we caught late-breaking coverage of the still-simmering student protests – here, here, here, and here. Enduring America and the Newest Deal summarized yesterday's drama, and Juan Cole raised the specter of Kurdish involvement. In other foreign coverage, Ignatius worried Andrew over a potential split between the US and Israel, Max Boot fueled his fears about indefinite occupation in Iraq, and al Qaeda explosions further stoked sectarianism there. We also listened to a suicide bomber.

In assorted commentary, Fallows analyzed climate-gate coverage, Weigel showed the success of Obama's Afghan speech, Hanna Rosin explained why divorce has dropped, Ta-Nehisi mulled reparations, David Link pondered bigotry, David Sessions condemned the capitalization of homophobia, and Harry Reid actually injected the history of slavery into the healthcare debate.

An apostate liberal blogger triggered reader debate here and here, a pair of Palin postings elicited a history lesson from readers here, her treatment of Trig peeved a parent with a special-needs kid, a reader extolled James Hansen's approach to carbon, another reader fisked him, and a Brookings scholar fisked cap and trade. Manbearpig wrote a poem.

The Dish received more great feedback on the window book here and here. Andrew's appearance on "The Joy Behar Show" is here if you missed it.

— C.B.

The Dish's go-to Persian-speaking reader translates:

The voice: "It's Tuesday 6:10 PM Tehran time…These guys you see walking on the pavement are Basiji brothers [by "brothers" he is being sarcastic] … some still carrying their batons …they all look tired after a full day of beating the students … [he becomes sarcastic, poking fun at the officials who calls the militia "students"] …oh and surrrre they are all "students" at Tehran University … except they don't go to the dorms like other students … they come here … at the old American embassy … but these "students"!!! are going inside this place to find out how much they're getting paid for beating people … well of course they count how many students they beat up so they could be paid accordingly … this is the shameful and blatant evidence of how the people who came Tehran University campus today are not students and this where they actually end up at night."

A reader writes:

History and facts, again, escape this woman. The top marginal tax rate in 1941 was 81 percent on incomes greater than $5 million (about $72 million in today's dollars). In 1942 and '43, it was 88 percent on $200,000 per year ($2.6 million today). In '44 and '45, it was 94 percent on $200,000 ($2.3 million today). The Greatest Generation did more than just save pennies to buy war bonds… most everyone paid more in taxes and some 40 million people paid taxes for the first time. From the Treasury's Web site:

Even before the United States entered the Second World War, increasing defense spending and the need for monies to support the opponents of Axis aggression led to the passage in 1940 of two tax laws that increased individual and corporate taxes, which were followed by another tax hike in 1941. By the end of the war the nature of the income tax had been fundamentally altered. Reductions in exemption levels meant that taxpayers with taxable incomes of only $500 faced a bottom tax rate of 23 percent, while taxpayers with incomes over $1 million faced a top rate of 94 percent. These tax changes increased federal receipts from $8.7 billion in 1941 to $45.2 billion in 1945. Even with an economy stimulated by war-time production, federal taxes as a share of GDP grew from 7.6 percent in 1941 to 20.4 percent in 1945. Beyond the rates and revenues, however, another aspect about the income tax that changed was the increase in the number of income taxpayers from 4 million in 1939 to 43 million in 1945.

See the complete history of tax tables here.

Another writes:

I love the right's worship of "The Greatest Generation," which of course earned its reputation for sacrifice under America's only three term president, who governed the economy in ways that even most liberals would today find shocking, shipped a generation of American men overseas to fight and die using a conscription policy that no politician would dream of suggesting for our pampered culture, rationed consumer goods including food (can you imagine how Americans would react to a ration on sugar today?), told Americans to go outside and plant vegetables in their yards (and then eat them!), and yes, saved America from the Great Depression and the world from Hitler.

The Greatest Generation did indeed earn the respect of those of us who follow, but let's not forget that we were lucky enough to have leadership that made the sacrifice mean something profound.