Month: July 2010

Adam Ozimek looks at the case for and against short-term stimulus paired with a long-term budget fix:

I think the best case against short term stimulus is to say that the government can’t be trusted to combine a serious long-term budget fix with a short term stimulus package. This means that no matter what they promise they will really pass a stimulus package without long-term cuts, which…will signal to the market that they are even more cowardly with respect to addressing the long-term problems than we first thought, and thus the fiscal position just got worse vis-a-vis politicians ability to handle it.

I think this is wrong though. If stimulus critics were to settle for a second best policy and use their political capital to haggle for serious long-term budget fix I think they could be successful.  Like Krugman, Ezra Klein, and Brad Delong, most liberals already seem to agree on the need for long-term budget fix, and so conservatives should be able to get a good deal on a long-term fix that they like.

That is, if "conservatives" were actually interested more in doing the right thing than in demonizing Obama. I'd like a second stimulus now combined with an ambitious long-term plan for slashing entitlements and defense. That fits no party's agenda. But my bet remains on Obama to do the right thing next year.

LitBrit pushes back against Amanda of Pandagon:

Not only would every single doctor in the world who was worth his medical license NOT tell a woman whose water had broken at eight months of pregnancy that it was okay to fly (!) for that long (!!) and take yet another flight (!!!) for a similar length of time (!!!!), and drive for an hour or so through the snowy, curving roads between Anchorage and the valley (!!!!!), it would not be physically possible for any woman, even Sarah Baracuda, Queen of the Tundra, to endure, for that long, that kind of pain–the baby's heavy, hard, bony skull is now lying smack on top of the contracting and dilating cervix, without the benefit of much or any water to cushion it.

That's why contractions hurt so damned much once the water breaks.

You couldn't do it without at least wincing, over and over (as I wrote before, for me, it was more like screaming pitifully, and other mothers have reported choking their husbands, threatening the nurse, and being willing to take the epidural in their eyeball, if that's what it took to subdue the pain).

In short, people would, at the very least, suspect that something was wrong.

Amanda's real point in a rather lazy and uninformed post is the same as DailyKos's in the first place: political. To wit:

The Palin conspiracy theory seems tailor-made to rob liberals of our moral authority against nutty right wing conspiracy theories.  It allows false equivalence to sneak in—both sides have their Birthers!

So it doesn't really matter what's true; what matters is if the inquiry could hurt liberals! As for her debunking of what's true, she should know that this blog has never claimed that Trig was Bristol's kid, just that I don't believe Palin's stories and would like to have simple, easily provided, proof. So please, once again with feeling: please prove me wrong. Any medical record clearly showing Palin's maternity will do. There must be a mountain of them. But no press outlet, apart from the ADN, will ask.

(Photo: Sarah Palin pregnant with a previous child.)

The Republican polling outfit did one of its usual numbers today, putting out the astonishing notion that 60 percent of Americans want health insurance reform repealed, and half want that strongly. It was picked up by the usual suspects – Ace of Spades, The Weekly Standard, Powerline, etc. But here's the poll of polls on health insurance reform, even including Rasmussen (which I routinely omit):

Rasmussen, I should add, hasn't been polling this question since March. But they did manage to churn out a 'poll' designed to confirm the passions of the GOP base and the GOP media. They found a sample that turned a 43 percent disapproval into a 60 percent support for repeal. And the direction of the polling is clear: opposition to the reform has fallen from around 54 percent in January to 43 percent at the end of June.

Chait on Brooks. I like David immensely. He's a truly civilized man. I never miss a column, and it's rare I don't learn something. I don't link when the column is persuasive as they often are. I feel lately, however, a reticence to take on the right when they truly need taking on. That was particularly true today.

A brilliant little scene about gay men, straight men and words – from one of the most brilliant comics around, Louis CK. In all this, there is a lovely American sanity – not too much defensiveness, a whole lot of candor, and a deep well of friendship:

The etymology, however, is completely bullshit.

That's the total number of the enemy we are asking 100,000 troops to remove from the wildernesses of Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to Obama's Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael Leiter. 400. More to the point, even a military that knows the terrain, speaks the language, and grasps the local politics is largely helpless:

Months after declaring victory on several important fronts, including in South Waziristan and the Swat Valley, the army has been forced to reopen campaigns after militants seeped back in … “The terrorists have been raised here; they can find their way around blind,” said Maj. Shahzad Saleem, as small gunfire sounded around the hills near Nawazkot where Sepoy Aziz was shot.

Surely, at some point, someone in Washington will be able to point out the obvious.

Brad DeLong's pitch for another stimulus:

To gain $150 billion of increased production and incomes this year we incur a $70 million a year cost going forward…That is not quite a free lunch—they take away my union card as an economist if I start claiming that free lunches exist. But it is certainly a value meal. We are getting more income and employment now—when we really need it—in return for sacrificing only a tiny bit of production each year in the future, when we believe that we will be richer and will mind the reduction significantly less.

The Best Buy employee who created this instant YouTube classic is in hot water:

When [Brian] Maupin refused to take the video down because it didn't mention Best Buy, he was suspended. "I can understand them wanting to, not wanting people to get the impression that Best Buy is like this and this is how it is when you come to our store but … you have to be able to laugh at yourself and say I realize this is an extreme exaggeration.

And NSFW. Gizmodo reaches out:

Hey Best Buy guy. Email us. You don't need to work at Best Buy when you can make funny stuff like this for the internet.

Beinart advises Obama to stand his ground:

I was in Israel last week, and my conversations tracked what the polls suggest: Israelis don’t love Barack Obama. Even leftists don’t grasp his strategy for the region and feel slighted that has spoken repeatedly to the Arab world, but not to them. But many of the same people who derided Obama said they consider him their best hope. It’s a sign of how desperate the Israeli peace camp has become. Do Israeli doves really believe Obama can bring about the two-state solution for which they yearn? Maybe not. He can, however, prevent Netanyahu and his allies from destroying that hope forever. He can preserve the possibility of a democratic Zionist state until Israelis recommit to it themselves. To borrow a metaphor, he can act as a bridge. As long as he doesn’t go wobbly.

Now, they're trying threats:

The Yesha Council, the principal voice of the settlement movement, took out large ads in Israeli newspapers, showing a wan, bloated Netanyahu, and warning him against bowing to possible U.S. pressure to extend the settlement freeze he promised would end in September. The cost, the ads hinted ("We voted for you because you gave us your word"), could be his job. The right's more radical quarters were more explicit. According to Army Radio, right-wing activists plan to put up large numbers of posters reading "Netanyahu is Bad for the Jews," as part of a campaign to thaw the freeze by setting up new, unauthorized settlement outposts.