Month: July 2010

by Chris Bodenner

TNC rounds up examples of ugly and often racist rhetoric from the right since Obama took office:

Perhaps you could argue that some of these instances aren't about race. Certainly, you could note that many of them are about race plus several other factors. But even granting those points as caveats, what you have is disturbing pattern among the GOP that sometimes floats up to the top. Black writers working in the mainstream, and even at liberal publications, are in a constant dialogue with white audiences. It is utterly useless, and to some extend brand-damaging, to repeatedly call on conservatives to repudiate racism in their midst. What many of us chose to do instead is to try to extend some sympathy, and get into the head of the offending party, in hopes of building a bridge.

I think, for those who are skeptical of the NAACP, something of a turn-about is in order. If you were black what would you think, faced with this pattern? If you were the NAACP what would you to say to this? The downside of the Obama approach, one that I still embrace, is that it tacitly supports Chait's notion that conservative opposition to Obama has "generally lacked much in the way of racial animus." I just don't think the facts bear that conclusion out–at all.

Ta-Nehisi also tackles Weigel's latest on the Tea Party backlash. John McWhorter – an even stronger NAACP critic than TNC in the past – sides with the group in this case as well. The more I read about the controversy and see how leaders in the TPM are making an ass of themselves, the more I side with my colleague and McWhorter.

by Patrick Appel

Chris Blattman flags a new paper:

Among young women, who experienced the greatest decline in HIV prevalence, the most important component was delaying sexual debut, accounting for 57 percent of the drop in HIV prevalence. Condom use by high risk males and to a lesser extent death (of older males) also played a significant role, accounting for 30 and 16 percent respectively. However, for older women, the trend is reversed, with death being more important than abstinence or condom usage.

by Patrick Appel

Howard Gleckman joins the retirement age debate:

While it is tough for older workers to find employment in today’s soft economy, we are talking about Social Security changes that won’t take effect for decades. By then, younger people will make up a much smaller share of the workforce, and there may be far more jobs available for seniors. In addition, older workers are likely to be healthier and better educated even as work continues to be less physically demanding. Still, Monique is right that there will be many 60-somethings who can’t work. And we are obliged to help them out. But the solution should be to reform the Social Security disability program for those who need it, not to allow everyone else to retire early.

by Patrick Appel

Timothy Lee makes some smart points in response to Julian Sanchez:

I agree with Julian’s take on this: political alliances are built by concrete actions toward shared goals, not by abstract statements of philosophical agreement. But I think his point can be made stronger with some specific examples.

In 2005, I was a founding employee of the Show-Me Institute, a “free market” think tank. What we meant by “free market” is that the organization devoted itself exclusively to those issues where conservatives and libertarians agreed. We wrote about taxes, school choice, property rights, health care policy, and so forth. We had an explicit policy that we didn’t do work on “social issues,” which in practice meant any issue where libertarians sided with liberals. So we avoided writing about immigration, gay rights, free speech, abortion, drug prohibition, prayer in schools, the death penalty, and the like.

And the Show-Me Institute is hardly unique. There’s a nationwide network of think tanks called the State Policy Network, with member organizations in almost every state, that are built on this same premise. 

He later gets into why there is no liberal-libertarian equivalent.

by Dave Weigel

Mark Halperin writes the 153,893th paean to Sarah Palin's "Mama Grizzlies" video (if an alien civilization just began observing Earth, it would think she invented YouTube) in a manner calculated to irritate liberals.

A new TIME poll shows Palin losing to Obama 55% to 34%, a lopsided margin that leads some Republican strategists to predict a wipeout if Palin is eventually chosen as the party's nominee. But that might not matter… Her candidacy would require almost none of the usual time sinks that force politicians to jump in early: power-broker schmoozing, schedule-intensive fundraising, competitive recruitment of experienced strategists, careful policy development. She would have immediate access to cash, with even small Internet donations likely bringing in millions.

You read that if you're a liberal who cannot stand this woman (but clicks on every article about her), you wonder what the hell Halperin is talking about. Really, even conservatives think it's a problem that a Palin 2012 bid would not include "careful policy development." How long have they been saying she's in a unique position to talk about energy and offshore drilling? How many unlettered appearances have we seen from her now, discussing that topic?

But Halperin is right about Palin in the media that's going to actually cover the 2012 election. This media is not going to care about her policies. If policies come up during debates, and she gives the same answers she gives on Fox now, and Mitt Romney pounces on her, the story will not be that the GOP's frontrunner gave a pallid answer. The story will be that Mitt Romney pounced. What does this do to his image? What does Mike Huckabee have to say about it?

And so on. It's hard to imagine Palin competing at the policy level the press claims she needs to get to, but easy to imagine her competing at the level they actually play on. Quick, cast your mind back to the countless 2007/2008 Democratic debates. Do you remember Hillary's mastery of policy? No. You remember her fumbling an answer on drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants, you remember Obama telling her she was "likable enough," and perhaps you remember Dennis Kucinich talking about aliens.

After 18 months in the spotlight with journalists treating her every tweet like fire from Olympus. Palin has to know how this works. Which is why Halperin is right.

by David Frum

Ezra Klein highlights this chart from the Brookings Institution showing that at present rates of job growth it will take years to "close the jobs gap." Brookings explains:

The "job gap" underlying these numbers is daunting. In recent months, on this blog, we described the job gap — the number of jobs it would take to return to employment levels from before the Great Recession, while also accounting for the 125,000 people who enter the labor force in a typical month. After today's employment numbers, the job gap stands at almost 11.3 million jobs.

How long will it take to erase this gap? If future job growth continues at a rate of roughly 208,000 jobs per month, the average monthly job creation for the best year for job creation in the 2000s, it would take 136 months (more than 11 years). In a more optimistic scenario, with 321,000 jobs created per month, the average monthly job creation for the best year in the 1990s, it would take over 57 months (almost 5 years).

But here's a crucial fact that Brookings omits: that 125,000 per month increase in the US labor force is not a law of nature. In fact, during the Bush years, more than half the growth in the US labor force was due to the arrival of immigrant labor. 

Immigrants now make up some 15% of the US labor force. They are concentrated in the less skilled portion of the labor force and in industries hardest hit, especially construction.

 If immigration levels were curtailed, the job gap would be a lot smaller. And if illegal immigrants returned home, rather than being put on a "path to citizenship," the problem of putting the unemployed back to work would be smaller and easier. 

Bamiyan, Afghanistan, 4 pm

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

I’ve noticed the posts about ‘non-monogamy’ with passing interest. Folks are too hung-up on sex, but that’s nothing new. I’ll relate my experience to illustrate behaviors that may be more common than many believe. And I’m curious to know whether other readers might have similar stories.

I’m a ‘straight’ male. When I married my wife many years ago, she was aware of a long-standing relationship I had with another man. (So, does that make me straight or maybe bisexual? Just to clarify, I am strongly attracted to beautiful women, and generally quite intimidated by the thought of sex with most men.) Rather than disapprove, she was intrigued and has always accepted and even encouraged the relationship, to the point where she values my male friend near as much as I do. The understanding and acceptance that she and I reached at an early point in our relationship was an important factor in establishing the trust we needed to agree that marriage was right for the two of us.

As the years have gone by, I’ve heard stories about other men who have started out straight and then began pursuing bisexual, or even exclusively homosexual relationships. At first I wondered how this could happen, but I’ve learned that, for myself, it is completely understandable. Although I still enjoy sex with my wife, it happens less often than in the past. Although sex drives for both of us have waned, her decline has been more obvious, and sex has never been quite as centrally important to her as it has been for me. I suppose I could go look for a trophy wife, but sorry, I’m not that kind of guy – I will never leave my wife, as long as she will have me. Bless her heart.

Today I would say that I prefer sex with my male partner, something that I never imagined in my youth. Although I still find women attractive, I’m pretty sure that my wife is my last female sexual partner. As I look back, I note that when I married, I was immediately cut off from sexual contact with other women. Society militates strongly against adultery, which has probably been good for our marriage. Still, my best friends know about my dual allegiances and understand that they work for the three of us.

So, I’ve achieved something that is quite rare, I think, relationships with two different people that are both quite fulfilling. The key ingredient in both is an understanding between the parties of the kind of support each person can give, and will give in order to survive and thrive in a challenging world. I wish no less for everyone.

by Dave Weigel

My post on Megyn Kelly's one-woman-and-a-network war against the Obama DOJ over the New Black Panthers has inspired some smart criticism, led by David Freddoso.

I am surprised at the apparent lack of self-awareness in Dave’s post. I’m not going to say I haven’t enjoyed his wall-to-wall coverage of the “birther” movement, but tell me: Just how is it different from this? There are superficial differences. For example, surely fewer Americans share the Black Panther ideology than remain muddle-headed about Barack Obama’s birth certificate. But the last time I checked, Orly Taitz hadn’t threatened to kill anyone on camera, tried to scare anyone away from a polling place, or received preferential treatment from Barack Obama’s (or anyone else’s) Department of Justice.

Actually, I dealt with this issue, or tried to, in an earlier post about why not to indulge conspiracy theories about Trig Palin. I don't want to quote myself, but Birtherism is a fairly popular conspiracy theory at this point, advanced at times by popular conservative voices like G. Gordon Liddy and Frank Gaffney, and advanced to convince critics of President Obama that their commander-in-chief is illegitimate. Taitz has represented a soldier who declined to serve under President Obama because he claimed that the commander-in-chief was not a citizen, and both the lawyer and the soldier worked to spread this myth. And we live in a weird media world now, where people can pick a news diet of stuff like Alex Jones and WorldNetDaily, and become certain that the media is hiding the real truth about their president's legitimacy. It's a problem — Mark Levin and Glenn Beck refuse to let "birthers" on their shows for that reason.

To answer Freddoso's last three points:

– The video of the Panthers "threatening to kill" is taken from days before the election, from a documentary about their antics, and the threat is obviously impotent — King Samir Shabazz is just mouthing off. These morons have never actually committed violent acts.

– The scary tape of the Panthers pulling their stupid stunt features voters or volunteers walking freely into the polling place behind them.

– We don't know that the Panthers got "preferential treatment" — this was a "voter intimidation" case where no voter came forward to say he was intimidated.

James Taranto had a smart response, too, although at the end he loses the plot a bit, comparing my use of the term "minstrel show" to New York Times columnist Charles Blow's use of it in describing black entertainers at a tea party.

Weigel's invocation of "minstrelsy" rankles. The headline's reference to "Megyn Kelly's Minstrel Show" seems completely out of place, since neither Kelly nor Powers (nor an unidentified brunette who makes a cameo) is wearing blackface. Now maybe Weigel didn't write the headline and meant only to suggest, as he does in the text, that Shabazz, in the Hannity interview, was acting as a minstrel.

I wrote the headline, and Taranto is right — I was referring to Shabazz. When Fox invites the NBPP on, it's giving viewers the image of clownish angry black men in military outfits and telling them — against all evidence — that they represent some real political or protest force. Michael Moynihan brings up a good comparison in his post on this, pointing out that the Swedish press sometimes spotlights the antics of the Westboro Baptist Church, the despicable people who protest funerals (including the funerals of soldiers), and inform readers that they're more than a fringe group despised by basically everyone in America.

by David Frum

Karl Rove offers an interesting reflection on his White House career in this AM's WSJ. His biggest mistake, he said, was failing to fight back harder against the "Bush lied, people died" slur:

At the time, we in the Bush White House discussed responding but decided not to relitigate the past. That was wrong and my mistake: I should have insisted to the president that this was a dagger aimed at his administration's heart. What Democrats started seven years ago left us less united as a nation to confront foreign challenges and overcome America's enemies.

I have a different take on what went wrong in the Rove years, published in 2007 in the NY Times.

As a political strategist, Karl Rove offered a brilliant answer to the wrong question. The question he answered so successfully was a political one: How could Republicans win elections after Bill Clinton steered the Democrats to the center? The question he unfortunately ignored was a policy question: What does the nation need — and how can conservatives achieve it?

Mr. Rove answered his chosen question by courting carefully selected constituencies with poll-tested promises: tax cuts for traditional conservatives; the No Child Left Behind law for suburban moderates; prescription drugs for anxious seniors; open immigration for Hispanics; faith-based programs for evangelicals and Catholics.

These programs often contradicted each other. How do you cut taxes and also create a big new prescription drug benefit? If the schools are failing to educate the nation’s poor, how does it make sense to expand that population by opening the door to even more low-wage immigration?

Instead of seeking solutions to national problems, “compassionate conservatism” started with slogans and went searching for problems to justify them.