Month: August 2010

The star began as a Bat Mitzvah DJ. The hair, the hair:

Paul Rudd: Bat Mitzvah DJ from Jewish Forward on Vimeo.

Allahpundit, who supports marriage equality, doesn't like the Prop 8 decision:

If the goal of gay-rights activists is to make same-sex marriage palatable to the public, then embittering opponents by torpedoing a hard-fought democratic victory seems like … an odd way to go about it. The response to that will be that equality can’t wait, just as it couldn’t wait vis-a-vis school desegregation in the 1950s. Except that (a) no one, including gay-marriage supporters, seriously believes that the harm here is as egregious as the harm to blacks under Jim Crow, and (b) there was no assurance of a legislative solution to racial injustice in the 1950s the way there currently is for gay marriage. A strong majority already favors civil unions; as I noted earlier, opposition to same-sex marriage is in decline and down to 53 percent. When polled, young adults are invariably heavily in favor, guaranteeing that the legal posture on this issue will shift further over the next decade. The real effect of this decision, assuming it’s upheld on appeal, will be to let gay-marriage opponents claim that they were cheated in a debate that they were losing and bound to lose anyway.

I understand the point. At the same time, I am unaware of how to control this kind of thing. Olson and Boies were and are not part of the gay rights establishment; and anyone can bring a lawsuit. What we're seeing is a series of waves toward equality – in public opinion, legislatures, and courts. Each one has back-eddies. But I've been part of this for too long to believe this social change can be micro-managed, timed perfectly, or controlled by anyone. In my adult lifetime, this issue has gone from what was regarded as a strange obsession of a few (gee, thanks) to what we see today. I sure didn't expect that; but I am glad no one controls it.  Yglesias, for his part, isn't worried:

Whenever a favorable-to-progressives judicial ruling come down, the concern trolls come out of the woodwork to fret about the backlash. So in the wake of a win for the left on Proposition 8 in California, I wanted to go on record alongside Ryan as thinking such concerns are, when genuine, wildly overblown.

Jason Kuznicki is still amazed at "how extraordinarily weak the expert testimony for the defense was" in the Prop 8 case:

I asked myself — couldn’t they have gotten Maggie Gallagher to testify? She comes across as reasonable most of the time. She might have offered one of her frequent catch phrases, that societies that “lose the marriage idea” die out. As a sound bite, it’s frightening and often convincing. But at trial, she’d have been asked the obvious follow-up question — name just one such society — and a moment of hilarity would have ensued, because there aren’t any.

Douthat pushes back against Packer:

Liberal commentators often point out that this White House’s approval ratings — and, by extension, its legislative agenda — are hostages to the unemployment rate. That’s true, up to a point. But it’s also true that the Obama White House placed a bet, on the policy substance and politics alike, when it made the stimulus package the centerpiece of its response to the recession. And having lost that bet, they’ve arguably been fortunate that more of their legislative agenda hasn’t been derailed. Fair or unfair, that’s just how politics works: There was never a world where Congress was going to pass the stimulus bill and health care reform and financial regulation and cap and trade and immigration reform, all in the teeth of a persistent 9-to-10 percent unemployment rate. The procedures of the Senate have been the mechanism whereby particular pieces of liberal legislation stalled and died, but the real causes of those defeats run much deeper than the filibuster.

Creative Review attends an exhibition at South London's Red Gate Gallery. An explanation:

What makes the work special is that every single piece of art was sent through the postal system, exposed and on view as regular mail. We will be displaying the art at the exhibition in its delivered state, as handled by the postal workers during transit!

Many more images here.

It feels as if Americans have been having the same argument for the entire time I've lived here. Very broadly speaking, one side wants to cut taxes to reward work and starve the beast of government; the other is too afraid to raise taxes but won't cut spending either. The Bush era combined the worst instincts of both: Bush cut taxes and spent us into a debt that made climbing out of this recession close to fiscally impossible without serious risk of default. Somehow, Obama has managed to prevent the worst from happening – and is being blamed for it. And so we look ahead to the question of letting the Bush tax cuts – a huge contributor to the debt – expire. Should we? Howard Gleckman asks:

Would raising [taxes on the top tax bracket] be a job-killer? That is less clear. Some research suggests that higher tax rates actually encourage small business formation. Why?  Because these firms allow their owners to shelter lots of income, behavior that is more lucrative when rates are higher. Other research suggests that higher rates do retard investment and hiring by existing firms. Donald Bruce and Tami Gurley-Calvez, who study small business for the Hudson Institute, have written a nice review of all these issues. 

While we are not certain about what higher taxes will mean for small business, we know these firms will suffer if they are unable to access capital. And to the degree that ever-greater government borrowing makes it harder for these firms to raise money, they and their employees will pay a price. That is the other consequence of keeping taxes low for high earners, which will cost nearly $700 billion over the next decade.   

It seems to me that unless the GOP backs hefty cuts in Medicare and defense, they cannot possibly claim to be fiscally conservative while opposing the end of the tax cuts. Of course, that won't stop them. But how they can claim intellectually that supply side economics still works is beyond me. If this debt doesn't prove them wrong, what would? Increasingly, I believe that opposing this supply-side nonsense is critical to restoring a sane conservatism. You know: like in the UK.

A comic book goes there.

TNC lands some blows:

One reason that black people grimace at invocations of their history to justify the struggle du jour, is because, very often, the invokers really don't know what the fuck they are talking about. Put bluntly they have no deep knowledge of the black struggle, and are not seeking any. For them, black history is a rhetorical device, employed to pummel their ideological foes, and then promptly discarded for more appropriate instruments.

E.D. Kain defends himself and TNC pounces again:

I am sure that, in some ways, the Holocaust is like the Middle Passage. I am also sure that, in some ways, the Holocaust and the Middle Passage are like pet euthanasia. I'm also sure that all three are somehow like a steak dinner. And so on. If your mission is to make yourself right, there are an abundance of pathways.

But if you're mission is to clarify your own thinking, and understand the experiences of other people, then you tend to shy away from defending analogies which, by your own lights, are "full of holes and designed to inflame more than enlight."  Sometimes, you go so far down into a hole, and you forget why, and how, you got there.

Over at Powerline, John Hinderaker writes:

I think it is safe to assume that anyone nominated to the Supreme Court by a Democratic President is explicitly or implicitly committed to the proposition that gay marriage is a constitutional right. If you think that is bizarre, stop voting for Democratic politicians.

His analysis might look less silly if before posting he'd read David Boaz:

Judge Walker was first appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, at the recommendation of Attorney General Edwin Meese III (now the Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow in Public Policy and Chairman of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation). Democratic opposition led by Sen. Alan Cranston (D-CA) prevented the nomination from coming to a vote during Reagan’s term. Walker was renominated by President George H. W. Bush in February 1989. Again the Democratic Senate refused to act on the nomination. Finally Bush renominated Walker in August, and the Senate confirmed him in December.

There's more:

Coalitions including such groups as the NAACP, the National Organization for Women, the Human Rights Campaign, the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force worked to block the nomination.

In other words, this “liberal San Francisco judge” was recommended by Ed Meese, appointed by Ronald Reagan, and opposed by Alan Cranston, Nancy Pelosi, Edward Kennedy, and the leading gay activist groups. It’s a good thing for for advocates of marriage equality that those forces were only able to block Walker twice.

This was a victory for gay conservatism in many ways, not that today's conservative movement wants anything to do with us.