Month: November 2010

A reader writes:

You're in the funeral in this Jameson's commercial, too.

In the end, all bald bears can look alike.

Nils August Andresen sees the danger:

A party needs a well-educated echelon – call it an elite – to formulate policy to deal with complex challenges. Without the philosophical and academic achievements of the likes of Friedrich von Hayek, Milton Friedman and James Q. Wilson, the Reagan revolution would not have been possible. …

I believe future Republican administrations would also try to draw on such talent to formulate policy. However, the well is drying up. So few of the experts in any given field will in the future be Republican. That is an enormous problem. The intellectual resources directed at finding conservative answers to today’s problems are weakened year by year. If not quite critical yet, thanks to the efforts of an older generation of Republicans, the ramifications of this trend might be dramatic.

Nate Silver introduces some data into the debate:

Suppose we are in a world in which: (i) members of the pre-Baby Boom generation are eventually replaced in the electorate by Millennials, who have relatively liberal views on marijuana; and (ii) nobody else ever changes their views on marijuana, other than if they have children, when some of them go from being in favor of legalization to against it.

In this world — which is a reasonable model of America in 2010 — support for marijuana initiatives would continue to increase for a few years until adults now over the age of 60 were no longer a significant part of the population. Then it would enter some sort of steady state.

…my back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that support would tap out at something on the order of 45-47 percent nationally. Of course, 45 percent support nationwide would probably translate to better than 50 percent support in states like California, Oregon, Nevada, New York, Vermont and so forth.  But it probably would not lead to a world in which, for instance, the Democratic nominee for President were willing to support marijuana legalization as part of his platform (and certainly not the Republican one)

(Photo: Michel Porro/Getty)

Noah Shachtman checks in on the air war in Afghanistan. It's become a blitzkrieg:

The U.S. and its allies have unleashed a massive air campaign in Afghanistan, launching missiles and bombs from the sky at a rate rarely seen since the war’s earliest days. In October alone, NATO planes fired their weapons on 1,000 separate missions, U.S. Air Force statistics provided to Danger Room show. Since Gen. David Petraeus took command of the war effort in late June, coalition aircraft have flown 2,600 attack sorties. That’s 50% more than they did during the same period in 2009. Not surprisingly, civilian casualties are on the rise, as well.

And:

[S]ome outside observers believe the strikes are part of an attempt to soften up the insurgency before negotiations with them begin in earnest. But one thing is clear: it’s a strategy Petraeus has used before. Once he took over the Iraq war effort, air strikes jumped nearly sevenfold.

National Institute of Drug Abuse experts recently answered teenagers' questions about drugs in an online forum. Crushable rounded up some of the best ones. A gem:

some guy – St. Henry District High School, Kentucky: can smoking a joint be a form of birth control

Dr.Ruben Baler: I am not aware of any evidence that suggests marijuana would be a viable mode of birth control. thanks for the question.

Edith Zimmerman calls the chat "one of the funnest things online right now."

Fallows' cover story is rightly getting attention. Kevin Drum has questions about Chinese clean coal technologies. Dave Roberts, on the other hand, draws a line between what he terms "Dirty F*ckin' Hippies (DFHs)", who don't believe that coal is a necessary part of our energy future, and "Powers That Be (PTBs)", who don't believe coal does enormous environmental damage and don't think that carbon reduction is necessary. Roberts chastises Fallows for framing his article as a rebuke of the former:

If you believe, as Fallows does, that climate change is an urgent, enormous challenge, then it's hard to see the value in worrying that some idealistic green somewhere thinks we can tackle it without coal. Being contrarian toward DFHs is a little … safe. If "clean coal" development isn't happening in the U.S., it's not because DFHs are against it, it's because nothing is happening in the U.S. A piece focused on that corrupt, criminal inaction might rattle a few cages. A piece reassuring Big Coal and its many backers that they'll always be in the driver's seat won't.

What Jim is doing, I suspect, is framing this argument in a way that cannot be dismissed as DFH-y by the PTBs. But DFHs should get past their coal WTFs ASAP anyhoo.

As the country navigates this latest recession, The Urbanophile advises that we learn from a city that faced its own economic collapse:

The lesson to be gleamed from Pittsburgh isn’t so much in what steps it’s taken on its way to recovery. Rather, the lesson to be learned from Pittsburgh is what happened to it when its Great Recession hit in 1983.

It failed. The steel collapse decimated Pittsburgh and its region, taking with it nearly 1 out of every 10 jobs there. Entire towns surrounding the city became obsolete. But it is because of that failure, that absolute bottoming-out, that Pittsburgh has been able to cast aside its past and emerge as a unique showcase of what a small, bustling, connected American city can eventually become.

The example of Pittsburgh is to fail on the failures and invest in the attributes- granted, of which the ‘Burgh had many, in its beautiful architecture, old establishment money, intact communities and ethnic organizations, and cultural trusts and universities- that a place already has. It is a tale not so much for cities facing similar problems to the Pittsburgh of 30 years past, as it is for the country as a whole in this stage of national transmogrification.

Not out of line with Tom Friedman's column today.

A reader writes:

I know circumcision has been a topic of particular interest and passion for you.  When I saw your latest post, and the incredulity therein, I had to reply.  About two years ago I had foot surgery to remove a juvenile bunion from my foot.

Long story short, my recovery was complicated – I have an auto-immune disorder and I was the one-in-thousands that rejected a tendon graft – and I had an open wound on my foot which would not close on its own.  I was even hooked up to a medical vacuum for several weeks in an attempt to close the wound. 

The thing that finally did it?  A skin graft made from foreskin cells.  As I recall, my doctor informed me that one foreskin could produce over a football field size of these kinds of grafts. But I concede that the face cream is silly.

Drum sizes up the presidential field:

So to summarize: we've got Romney, who's the obvious frontrunner but also a transparent panderer who has some serious problems with the Republican base (RomneyCare, he's Mormon); a couple of decent but faceless midwesterners; [Haley Barbour] a smart tactician who unfortunately resembles Boss Hogg far too much to be electable; and three bomb throwing social conservatives. I guess somebody has to win the nomination, but it's sure hard to see it being any of these folks (though I know plenty of people disagree with me about Palin's electability).

Frum cheers Romney's early lead:

[T]he interesting background to the poll is the structure of Romney preference: While Palin, Gingrich, and Huckabee divide the votes of conservatives (with further competition perhaps to come from other entrants to the race), Romney holds a big and uncontested lead among party moderates.

Yes, they exist. And it turns out: they matter.

This Zogby poll, which shows New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (!) in the lead, demonstrates just how flimsy these early polls are. John Zogby's understanding of the result:

Support for Christie shows that some Republican voters may be looking for a new face and believe that neither Palin nor Romney can defeat Barack Obama.