Month: June 2010

Josh Green asks the president to consider cutting defense:

Bringing the deficit under control is a zero-sum game. Eventually, we'll have to raise taxes and cut spending. As budget pressure grows, the nearly $1 trillion in military cuts proposed by the [The Sustainable Defense Task Force] could look appealing. One way of getting this done is through the president's Deficit Reduction Commission, which will recommend a package of cuts to Congress in December for an up-or-down vote. The Sustainable Defense Task Force is lobbying the commission to do what Obama wouldn't: consider military cuts, and in the context of the entire federal budget.

Thoreau is pessimistic.

A character from Killzone 3 menaces players in the Sony Playstation 2 exhibit in the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) at the Los Angeles Convention Center on June 16, 2010 in Los Angeles, California. The Entertainment Software Association expects 45,000 people to attend the E3 expo featuring more than 250 gaming industry publishers and developers such as Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony. By David McNew/Getty Images.

E.D. Kain defends my vigilance toward her:

Regardless of her electoral chances, Palin is nonetheless a bellwether of sorts – a bizarre prophet of the right – a John the Baptist for American conservatism. Sharron Angle is proof of that. I worry more about her successor than the once-and-sort-of-former Governor of Alaska. Someone who is just as crazy but a better salesman – a well spoken, intelligent lunatic, at once charismatic and fiercely ‘merican.

Lee Harris pens one:

The lesson of history is stark and simple. People who are easy to govern lose their freedom. People who are difficult to govern retain theirs. What makes the difference is not an ideology, but an attitude. Those people who embody the “Don’t tread on me!” attitude have kept their liberties simply because they are prepared to stand up against those who threaten to tread on them. To the pragmatist, it makes little difference what ideas free people use to justify and rationalize their rebellious attitude. The most important thing is simply to preserve this attitude among a sufficiently large number of people to make it a genuine deterrent against the power hungry. If the Tea Party can succeed in this all-important mission, then the pragmatist can forgive the movement for a host of silly ideas and absurd policy suggestions, because he knows what is really at stake. Once the “Don’t tread on me!” attitude has vanished from a people, it never returns. It is lost and gone forever — along with the liberty and freedom for which, ultimately, it is the only effective defense.

On this point, we agree. But this point, it seems to me, is trivial compared with the complete lack of realism and conservatism among these fanatics.

Alan Abramowitz looks to November:

Democrats are in a stronger position to defend their majority in the House of Representatives today than they were in 1994 because a larger proportion of their seats are in strongly Democratic districts and they have fewer open seats to defend. However, if the national GOP tide turns out to be as strong this year as it was in 1994, Republicans would have a reasonable chance of regaining control of the House with a very narrow majority.

Chait's reflections on this here. It's still a long way off.

A reader writes on different expectations for rock stars and athletes:

There seems to be a pretty straightforward answer to this double-standard that doesn't require any mucking about in paleoanthropology. Athletes are typically associated with hard work and achievement; sports competitions are typically institutional and often government-sponsored events; and athletic competition thrives on order and rules. They are the champions of the values of organized society, which makes them excellent role models. As such, society will expect them to be well-behaved. Musicians, or at least popular musicians, are the polar opposite: their success is associated with creativity and inspiration, their excellence springs from innovation and subversion.

But most importantly, one of the greatest things that pop and rock stars sell is an anti-social image of extravagant hedonism or rebellion (and frequently both). Part of being a fan is to indulge in these things that aren't generally acceptable in polite society. This double-standard is not a bug: it gets to the heart of what it means, in the popular imagination, to be a musician and to be an athlete.

Nate Silver digs into the predictive stats.

When it comes to exposing a government's war crimes, real and courageous reporting is necessary. Harry Evans remembers his own achievement here. Money quote:

To reach his devastating conclusion, Saville had to acquire and sift a mass of passionate conflicting testimony of a fast-moving series of events occurring more or less simultaneously nearly 40 years ago. Pivotal to his whole inquiry was the unique, original first-hand reporting done over an intense 11 weeks in 1972 by a team of reporters of the Sunday Times Insight Team. Cardboard boxes of the reporters’ notes and memos, long stored at the Sunday Times, were seized by Saville in 1998 and provided the bedrock of evidence enabling his inquiry to test the veracity of witnesses in Derry, many of whom had forgotten or misremembered the testimony they gave freshly to the reporters in 1972 and some had died. No other press or television organization had attempted that detailed of a narrative reconstruction at the time.

Jane Mayer: save your notes. We'll hold these criminals accountable one day.

Jessica Bennett and Jesse Ellison make the case against marriage:

It may counter what we grew up thinking, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing. With our life expectancy in the high 70s, the idea that we’re meant to be together forever is less realistic. As Hannah Seligson, the author of A Little Bit Married, puts it, there’s a “new weight to the words ‘I do.’?” Healthy partnerships are possible, for sure—but the permanence of marriage seems naive, almost arrogant. “Committing to one person forever is a long time,” says Helen Fisher. “I wonder how many people really think about that.” If you’re anything like us, you’ll have plenty of time to do just that—while you’re sitting in the pews, at other people’s weddings.

Andrew Romano rebuts his colleagues:

The fact is, marriage isn’t going anywhere. It will always be the dominant expression of love and commitment in our society. If young, egalitarian, independent men and women like Bennett and Ellison cede the entire institution to people who are fine with the old, broken model, then love and commitment will always be defined primarily in the very terms they abhor. To really alter the dynamic of male-female relationships in America, we’ll have to redefine marriage from the inside out.

And this has already happened. But do I think that commitment to one another for life is unreasonable or foolish? Yes, we do live much longer than most humans when marriage was forged in the West, and our options as individuals are more constant and more compelling in a wealthy time of comparative leisure.

But I take the “forever” seriously myself. And I think that core vow – never to abandon one’s spouse, to make living together work even when exit might seem easier – is central to marriage’s power. It is unreasonable – which is why we promise it. The vow establishes the arc of our ambition, and a sense of marital love’s eternity. This is why it remains sacred to me – because committing to another human being for ever – is always sacred. And when we commit to something this profound, we need to find some, well, awe to understand it.