Month: March 2010

Thomas P Barnett reflects on six years of daily work. It's a very sage and sobering summary, and I think he's right in understanding that blogging, by forcing a blogger to keep up with so many things, both leads to inevitable misjudgments in real time but also what he calls his

professional "RAM," or random-access memory storage capacity.

Then he writes something after my own heart:

I remain somewhat old-fashioned in my blogging, mixing in a portion of personal posts with the professional flow. I have always blogged under my own name on my eponymous website, and like it that way, which explains why I've turned down a lot of offers to blog on group sites or to expand my own site into a multi-voiced brand. Truth be told, I still enjoy the pure F-U! element of a personal web log, or diary.

I believe the honesty and freedom that accompanies that sole-proprietor approach is crucial to making sure the material takes me where I need to go, and not the other way around.

I've been lucky to have been able to retained such a "F-U! element" even when writing under the umbrella of Time or The Atlantic.  But I also have to say, as I approach my tenth anniversary of daily blogging, that the exposure and constant labor is grueling a decade in. Without Chris and Patrick and you, the Dish readers, I'd have ground to a halt a long time ago.

Keith Hennessey doesn't believe the Obama administration should use tax dollars to subsidize underwater homeowners with fixed rate mortgages. He highlights a program that would help homeowners with mortgage balances up to $729,750. An illustration of his point:

Imagine twin brothers, each with $180K of annual income.  One rents, and the other has a $700,000 mortgage on a home that declined from $800,000 in value to $600,000 in value.  Both brothers lose their jobs.  Why should the renter pay higher taxes to subsidize his brother’s mortgage payments?

Losing a home due to financial hardship is tragic.  Does that make it someone else’s responsibility?

From Will Wilkinson (click to enlarge). Will is wading through World Values Survey data. He contrasts this chart showing greater tolerance for gays and lesbians with relatively steady views on prostitution. He asks:

In the space of about 25 years, the proportion of the population in all these countries saying homosexuality is never justifiable drops precipitously. However, the overall trend in attitudes toward prostitution is not so clear and generally less dramatic. What accounts for the difference?

Pete Davis writes that a Value Added Tax, a policy many economics favor, "won't produce instant revenue, easily collected revenue, or fairness." Bartlett agrees at VAT wouldn't produce revenue quickly and argues that "it needs to be implemented well in advance of a financial crisis, perhaps initially as a revenue-neutral tax reform." Avent applies these thoughts to other policy debates:

[C]ontra Greg Mankiw, the wonk who advocates for a policy based on an idealised and theoretical assessment of its merits relative to alternatives may be doing the world a disservice. Instead, more time should be spent thinking about how politics is likely to warp a policy and building a relatively resilient package of reforms.

A reader writes:

Are you guys going to talk about the April 19 Second Amendment demonstrations?  As a person from Oklahoma City, I find the entire idea upsetting beyond belief.  These protests are going to take place on the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing.  The idea of a bunch of armed right-wingers parading around on that day — especially here — makes me *ill*.  Do any of these people know what actually happened here on that day?

The most painful memory that I have is this:  Sitting up all night crying, watching television coverage of the rescue efforts, image after image of injured people, bloodied children.  And periodically, the television anchorpeople would stop and say to the camera: "For any kids who may be watching: if you're at home, waiting for mama or daddy to come home from work in downtown Oklahoma City, and they haven't come home, you're alone, and you need help, you can call this number, and someone will come and help you."  Every time, I would just lose it.  I'm sitting here with tears streaming down my cheeks from the memory.

Who — WHO — would think that this is anything to be celebrated?  To be invoked?  What the hell kind of monsters are these people?

Blue Oklahoma notes:

A statement is posted in the thread on the website: "The date was picked because it is the 235th anniversary of the battle of Lexington/Concord and it's also Patriots day. The OK bombing was never even thought of when the date was planned"

Another event that occurred on April 19:

1993 – The 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian building outside Waco, Texas, USA, ends when a fire breaks out. Eighty-one people die.

Drum had lunch with Felix Salmon. One takeaway:

We should all be more worried about the potential of a mass casualty event — an epidemic, a gigantic earthquake, a massive hurricane, etc. — to annihilate the insurance industry and take out the rest of the financial system as a side effect. The AIDS epidemic nearly did it, Felix says, and missed only because most of its victims weren't insured. A really big hurricane hitting Long Island could do it, though.

Today on the Dish we kept up our coverage of the Vatican crisis. The big news was the Legionaries of Christ condemning its founder, Marcial Maciel, for his long history of abuse. Theocons such as George Weigel continued to defend the Church and cast blame on the media – a strategy not unlike Palin's. Meanwhile, David Link got to the crux of the crisis.

In Dennis Ross coverage, Andrew defended Rozen's post against Goldblog, Steinglass countered Andrew, and Exum added two cents. Mario Loyola ventured that Israel has no real desire for a two-state solution, Andrew pointed out a potential UN veto on settlements, and a reader dissented over Andrew's analysis.

In other coverage, Musings In Iraq assessed the elections, Andrew reacted to the Christian militia story, Podhoretz and Hinderaker fawned over Palin, Kristol invoked the blowback argument, and Murdoch readied the paywall. Jill Lepore discussed the futility of marriage counseling, Ricky Martin came out, Iceland banned strippers, and readers responded to the gender wage gap.

More AEI-gate here. A fascinating photo series here, fart blogging here, and more animal-suicide blogging here. Weekend coverage here.

— C.B.

Listen up:

Chait whacks NPod's Palin puff piece. Larison is bored by "irrational admiration" of Palin:

Considering the low opinion of Obama most Palinites have, I have often thought it strange that so many of her fans damn her with what they must regard as extremely faint praise: “At least she’s better than Obama!” Leave aside for now how absurd this sort of claim makes them look when one fairly compares the political careers of the two, and just consider what contempt many of her so-called defenders must have for her that all they can bring themselves to say is that she is better than someone they regard as a dangerous incompetent.

I found the piece so boring and predictable in its deliberate stupidity I couldn't even muster a faint splutter of remonstrance.

The Brits show that they are about, you know, the issues. Here's one of the first TV-debates – this time between potential future chancellors, i.e. economics ministers in charge of the entire government budget. Time review here; Guardian's here. Massie's take here.

I'm hoping (threatening?) to live-blog the prime ministers' ones: