Month: November 2010

Jacob Levy argues that abolishing earmarks would indeed save money. It won't cut the deficit by much, but his logic is sound:

Republican earmark supporters have been saying that abolishing earmarks transfers allocation authority to the dreaded Obama Administration. Well, yes. And if you tell a bunch of Republican legislators to decide how much money to give to the Obama administration to allocate, they'll come up with a smaller number than if you tell them to come up with an amount for them to divide up among themselves to allocate. Indeed the same holds true for members of the President's own party.

Brian Ulrich highlights new research on 1990s Iraq:

[Cornell University's David Siddhartha Patel's] major criticism of current understandings of late Ba'athist Iraq are that they focus too much on the regime as the only important actor, with far more attention needing to be paid to the changes which developed from below. What he proposes, and I draw this summary not only from his paper, but also from his responses to questions, is that the central authorities in Baghdad associated with Saddam Hussein lost control of much of the country, in which local officials developed their own informal fiefdoms based on the perception of government authority and access to resources.

Because resources became increasingly scarce, those who could access those resources on behalf of clients became important local power brokers. As examples, he mentioned tribal shaykhs whose claim to influence was their ability to get the plastic sheeting necessary for protecting crops and the respect of letters of endorsement from the Sadr movement in accessing facilities at a local level.

What's the takeaway from this? Interesting and important things are starting to happen in our understanding of Iraq in the years between 1991 and 2003, things will may radically reshape our perceptions of what transpired both before and after the U.S. invasion.

The BBC:

The South’s military was placed on its highest non-wartime alert after the shells landed on Yeonpyeong island. Pyongyang accused the South of firing first. The Southern military said it had conducted exercises but shelling was directed away from the North.

This is one of the worst clashes since the Korean War ended, analysts say. 

The Wall Street Journal:

The larger difficulty with North Korea is that nothing seems to work, neither carrot nor stick. Over the course of the last decade or so the West has intermittently tried engagement with that strangest of states. But it seems to have produced no returns in terms of moderating the regime’s nuclear ambitions.

Robert Gibbs:

Earlier today North Korea conducted an artillery attack against the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong. We are in close and continuing contact with our Korean allies. The United States strongly condemns this attack and calls on North Korea to halt its belligerent action and to fully abide by the terms of the Armistice Agreement. The United States is firmly committed to the defense of our ally, the Republic of Korea, and to the maintenance of regional peace and stability.

Daniel Korski:

The South Korean military was conducting drills near Yeonpyeong island when the North opened fire. But that does not explain today’s flare-up. More likely, the North Koreans are trying to set favourable ground for any talks that may begin (so they can extract concessions), while telling external and internal audiences that despite Kim Jong Ill having unveiled his youngest son Kim Jong Un as his heir apparent, succession will not weaken the North.

The West has relatively few levers to change North Korea’s behaviour – except to swear to protect South Korea (and Japan) in case of a full-scale war; or offer North Korea assistance. Neither are attractive options. 

Global Voices is translating South Korean tweets. Doug Mataconis’s prescription:

Ultimately, solving the North Korea problem is going to happen when the Chinese finally decide that they are through with propping up an erratic regime that seems to be trying to turn itself into the modern world’s first hereditary dictatorship. When that happens, I think we’ll find things will change dramatically, and quickly, on the Korean peninsula.

(Photo: This picture taken on November 23, 2010 by a South Korean tourist shows huge plumes of smoke rising from Yeonpyeong island in the disputed waters of the Yellow Sea on November 23, 2010. North Korea fired dozens of artillery shells onto a South Korean island on November 23, 2010, killing two people, setting homes ablaze and triggering an exchange of fire as the South’s military went on top alert. By STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Peter Smith explains one reason why airline food sucks:

Recently, Germany’s Lufthansa Airlines conducted research inside a stationary Airbus A310 designed to replicate flying conditions. Deutche Welle reported that flyers said their taste buds felt dulled, requiring 20 percent more sugar and salt (explaining the particular appeal of V-8 or a Bloody Mary). In another study published this fall, British and Dutch researchers outfitted volunteers with headphones playing loud background noises and found that the noise made foods appear less salty and sweet. Loud noise did make crunchy foods appear crunchier—more Munchie Mix, anyone?

Bernstein interprets her favorables:

Not only is the 80% favorable number [among Republicans] (with a 4:1 favorable ratio) nothing special, but she just doesn't do very well in ballot test questions.  She's at 16%, tied with Huck for second behind Romney, in the latest Gallup. Given her significant advantage in name recognition, it's pretty clear that a lot of Republicans who say they like her also have very little interest in voting for her for president.

As I've said before, I'm not going to predict a winner at this point for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.  What I will try to do is to interpret the evidence that we see.  And to the extent that the early polling is important, what it tells us is that Sarah Palin is a legitimate contender, but hardly a juggernaut, and hardly impervious (yes, even among Republicans) to negative stories in either the nonpartisan or the partisan press.

Katie Roiphe wonders if parenthood has gone too far:

Can we, for a moment, flash back to the benign neglect of the 1970s and '80s? I can remember my parents having parties, wild children running around until dark, catching fireflies. If these children helped themselves to three slices of cake, or ingested the second-hand smoke from cigarettes, or carried cocktails to adults who were ever so slightly slurring their words, they were not noticed; they were loved, just not monitored. And, as I remember it, those warm summer nights of not being focused on were liberating. In the long sticky hours of boredom, in the lonely, unsupervised, unstructured time, something blooms; it was in those margins that we became ourselves…

One wonders if family life is somehow overweighted in the children's direction—which is not to say that we should love them less, but that the concept of adulthood has somehow transmogrified into parenthood. What one wonders, more specifically, is whether this intense, admirable focus is good for the child? Is there something reassuring in parental selfishness, in the idea that your parents have busy, mysterious lives of their own, in which they sometimes do things that are not entirely dedicated to your entertainment or improvement?

Mark Oppenheimer concurs:

I think these kinds of parents are striving to rule out eccentricity. Nobody, after all, is striving to engineer a lovable nerd, or a spacey dreamer, or an obsessive collector. But the world needs such people; in my life, I need such people. What is more, until we have a perfect science of happiness, which seems not to be coming any time soon, we have no right to assume that the Ivy-educated, well-rounded over-achiever is necessarily the happiest type; what if the chess geek is? Or the comix collector? In the meantime, over-controlling parents are just acting out their own best hunches, or, more likely, their own failed fantasies.

(Photo by D Sharon Pruitt, who captions: "Girls Rock Climbing Antelope Island, Utah")

A reader writes:

We used to see lots of coyotes when we lived in a Dallas neighborhood near White Rock Lake.  (I shot some video at the time.) One of the more interesting urban coyote-related stories I once read was regarding dead house cats being found in suburban neighborhoods. 

The residents were quite spooked because the cats were often found on their backs with their abdomens cleanly opened down the middle.  Many of their internal organs were placed at the side of the carcasses, and then the insides of the carcasses were cleaned completely out. Residents thought this was the work of devil worshippers!  And were on guard for escalations in the mischief.

However, animal experts soon reported that coyotes were likely the culprits.  They apparently don't like certain internal organs, so they drop them to the side.  Then they eat and lick the "bowl" clean.

So… the downside to urban coyotes: They might hunt cats and small dogs.  I've even heard of small children being targeted.

Another writes:

Chicago-based coyotes are old news.  Early on Sunday September 1, 1997, while pushing a baby stroller (my 4-month-old son was an early riser), I encountered a coyote exactly one block away from Wrigley Field on the corner of Grace and Seminary.  Chicago Animal Control reacted as if I was reporting a squirrel sighting.

Another:

If Chicago wants to know how coyotes do in an urban setting, all they had to do was call San Francisco. Coyotes have lived for years in parks and golf courses in San Francisco.  They become accustomed to people (perhaps because of people feeding them) and then become emboldened and start attacking pet dogs and cats.  And when that happens the city has to call in professional hunters who kill the coyotes.

Today on the Dish, Andrew seconded Timothy Kincaid on the symbolic power of allowing gays in the military and we covered the Pope's prostitute gaffe. Andrew rebutted Chait on pundit priorities for the deficit, explained his use of "ni**er," and reconsidered Hillary. Andrew analyzed the latest round of Israeli excuses, and Ben Smith set a record for Likudnik quoting. TSA scanners could decrease air travel, if only because unlike other injustices, this one is very visible. This disgruntled TSA worker didn't like to cop a feel on the obese, and some cooked the books on murder in Detroit.

Nate Silver reminded us that Palin loves to hog the spotlight, and Frum and Pareene picked apart Palin's new book. We parsed Palin's allergy to expertise, Frum hoped Huck could best her, and we sorted through the aftermath of Labash's anti-Palin story. Mercede Johnston, Tripp Palin's aunt and sister of Levi, kept pondering the provenance of Trig, and Telly Davidson contemplated the reality show and its implications for 2012. Chait and Bernstein considered a government shutdown, and John McWhorter advocated for the simple Direct Instruction method of teaching.

New Zealand activists pushed a shopping cart full of marijuana, Mark Twain might have eventually changed his mind about Iraq, and foreign aid had a dark side. Bradford Plumer showed us the light on incandescent light bulbs, and China and America couldn't seem to build a network of highspeed trains.  Creepy ad watch here, VFYW here, quote for the day here, Hathos alert / Shut Up And Sing contest here, unsecured trash satire here, MHB here, cool ad watch here, email of the day here, FOTD here.

–Z.P.

Larison is still betting against Palin:

[A] Palin presidential campaign in the general election is the sort of thing that journalists and pundits would love to see for the same reason that many NASCAR fans watch those interminable, dull races: they are holding out hope for a spectacular, destructive multi-car pile-up. Imagine how terribly earnest and serious an Obama-Daniels competition would be. That would be no fun at all. It’s much more fun to imagine one of the major parties consciously deciding to destroy itself, which is what a Palin nomination would be for the GOP.

Charlie LeDuff reports on the tragic death of a seven year old during a SWAT raid in Detroit. There is much to excerpt, but here's a glimpse at crime in the city more generally:

While other American metropolises have gotten control of their murder rate, Detroit's remains where it was during the crack epidemic. … To avoid the embarrassment of being the nation's perpetual murder capital, the police department took to cooking the homicide statistics, reclassifying murders as other crimes or incidents. For instance, in 2008 a man was shot in the head. ME Schmidt ruled it a homicide; the police decided it was a suicide. That year, the police said there were 306 homicides—until I began digging. The number was actually 375. I also found that the police and judicial systems were so broken that in more than 70 percent of murders, the killer got away with it. In Los Angeles, by comparison, the unsolved-murder rate is 22 percent.