Month: September 2010

Tim Noah ends his series on inequality:

We have now reviewed all possible causes of the Great Divergence—all, at least, that have thus far attracted most experts’ attention. What are their relative contributions? Here is a back-of-the-envelope calculation, an admittedly crude composite of my discussions with and reading of the various economists and political scientists cited thus far:

1. Race and gender are responsible for none of it, and single parenthood is responsible for virtually none of it.
2. Immigration is responsible for 5 percent.
3. The imagined uniqueness of computers as a transformative technology is responsible for none of it.
4. Tax policy is responsible for 5 percent.
5. The decline of labor is responsible for 20 percent.
6. Trade is responsible for 10 percent.
7. Wall Street and corporate boards’ pampering of the Stinking Rich is responsible for 30 percent.
8. Various failures in our education system are responsible for 30 percent.

Drum wants to focus more on politics.

Ambers:

Why did Democrats take a beating for passing a health care bill that was very similar in form to what Republican intellectuals had been urging for more than a decade? Because the Tea Party, conservative independents and Republicans have moved the political center to the right–marginally on a 0 to 100 scale, but enough to tip the scale away from Democrats.

Basically, the right stared down the Obama liberals. And since no Democrat, including Obama, has made much of a sustained case for the insurance reform, the successful bank and auto bailouts and the stimulus after passage, Independents have shifted with those who show conviction.

I don't know why I keep being surprised by the core political incompetence and cowardice of Democrats.

Andrew Biggs puts our fiscal problems in perspective:

Big government isn’t generated by caring for the truly poor; after all, despite spending 25 times more than needed to fill the poverty gap, we nevertheless leave millions in poverty. Rather, rising pension and health spending on middle- and upper-class Americans—principally through the Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid programs—is the true fiscal burden and the largest imposition on personal choice and freedom. Without these three programs, the current size of government would be much smaller and the dangers of future fiscal catastrophe due to rising spending and debt would be all but eliminated.

Via Reihan, who relates the passage to DC's mayoral race.

 

It's classic Jonah Goldberg: defending the red team by changing the subject to similar pop-psychology stuff done by people on the blue team. But it's an interesting discussion. For the record, I find Jonah's idea that Newt Gingrich is "intellectually dazzling" preposterous, and his notion that D'Souza's inflammatory broad brush is "meticulous" just ludicrous.

I also think he blithely ignores the real context and purpose of the D'Souza piece – demonizing Obama by conflating him with America's enemies, describing a centrist Democrat as a radical commie not by analyzing what he has done but by what may have been in his father's mind, delegitimizing him as somehow un-American because he grew up in Hawaii. However silly it is to reduce Bush to a victim of a daddy-complex (although he is a rare president who succeeded his father in the job), it has none of the explosive and racist undertones of D'Souza's polemic.

That matters; and the elite Republican toleration of populist bigotry and fear is a betrayal of serious, responsible conservatism.

Howard Gleckman balances the budget for Mitch McConnell:

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) wants to permanently extend all of the Bush-era tax cuts. He’s also rejected even modest efforts by President Obama to restrain the growth of Medicare. He is opposed to efforts by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to control future Pentagon spending. And he favors a constitutional amendment that would require a balanced budget. It all got me wondering: What would such a McConnell government look like?

The whole post is worth a read.

Gregg Easterbrook, who is against the death penalty:

…here’s a proposal for anyone who supports capital punishment. The condemned should be shot in the head. No means of killing a human being is faster, and thus suffering is minimized. And the death penalty is not about vengeance, right? It’s about justice. Justice should be swift. The swiftest and least painful path to death is being shot in the head.

Larison continues to minimize Palin's chances:

The basic argument against O’Donnell can be made against Palin: outside the bubble of her devoted followers, very few people like her, and even fewer believe she is qualified for the office. The main difference is that Palin has a slightly larger bubble, but even this bubble doesn’t include most of the GOP. As Ross suggested yesterday, Delaware could be a reality check and a cautionary tale about “ideological purism,” and most attentive and savvy voters (which is what a lot of early primary voters are) will see it that way. Defeating an incumbent President is difficult. There’s a reason that it has only happened four times in the last century. If Republicans want to have a chance, they will nominate someone other than Palin, and if there is one thing that is obvious from the last two years it is that most Republicans are desperate to have a realistic chance of defeating Obama.

Reflecting on Mayor Fenty's primary loss, Megan defends a more radical approach to education reform.

Vox Nova pushes back against Josh Marshall's carping on O'Donnell for being "crazy" on masturbation:

Granted her views aren’t culturally mainstream, but they hardly qualify as crazy.  It’s not as though O’Donnell now wishes to stone adulterers and homosexuals or criminalize impure thoughts and sexual self-stimulation.  Those would be crazy. 

Vox has a point. It is mainstream Catholic orthodoxy that masturbation is as wrong as gay sex. Leading theocon Robbie George is on record defending the position and only opposes state regulation of jerking off because it would require, well, a police state that would make the Stasi look mild. Sarah Posner cautions Democrats against "overplaying the masturbation bit":

But does she still think women serving in Iraq or Afghanistan endanger our national security? That seems like, uh, fertile ground for determining just how far her views on sex and sexuality go.

More on those views here. I think the more the orthodox Catholic position on wanking is out there the better, because the position is rooted in exactly the same theology as the position on marriage equality and contraception.

A mischievous thought: when will someone ask O'Donnell, as a single woman, if, since her conversion to Catholicism, she has ever masturbated? She cannot have had any sex, right? And that includes sex alone. Since she has made this a public stance, and since, apparently, she cannot lie (even if it would mean handing over Jews to Nazis), she has made the question perfectly legit.

This seems to me to be what Jake Tapper is for. But I suspect O'Donnell will be as available to the press in 2010 as Palin was in 2008. And she is now asking that her previous statements be ignored:

“I was in my twenties and very excited and passionate about my newfound faith. But I can assure you, my faith has matured and when I go to Washington, D.C. it’ll be the Constitution on which I base all of my decisions, not my personal beliefs.”

The theocons will probably have a conniption. She used the Kennedy-Cuomo "personal beliefs" argument. But she still wants to ban all abortions except when the life of the mother is at stake. What is her position on the civil rights of her gay sister? Is wanking now ok? You cannot now just walk away from these positions. You have to either reject or reaffirm them. So which ones does she now reject?