Month: December 2010

"To my friend who said that history would judge us poorly, I would submit if you would look thoroughly at history — and I’m not saying it’s cause and effect — but when militaries throughout history of the greatest nations in the world have adopted the policy that 'fine for homosexuality to be overt' — you can keep it private and control your hormones fine, if you can’t, that’s fine too — they’re toward the end of their existence as a great nation," – Congressman Louie Gohmert.

A blog dedicated to documenting the crustie subculture. Here is "Ketchup":

So I woke up one day and I was fucking fifteen years old, ran away from the fucking group home. Decided it was in my best interests to become a crack head on the streets. And spent the last two years losing my mind in Oklahoma City.

I started traveling after I got clean off of meth and was discovered by some hippies on the street. They asked me what I was doing on the street. I said, "I was trying to score another bag of meth." They said, "hey, you want to go somewhere with us?" I said, "where are you going?" And they said, "does it really matter?" And I said, "no I guess no it doesn't really matter." At that point I was eighteen years old and I went on my first trip to Knoxville. Stayed with all these crazy bio diesel hippies. They make bio diesel out of corn. That's when I figured out you could travel. That homelessness didn't mean you had to stay in one place and rot away or be a drug addict. That you were actually allowed to move around and do something interesting and explore the world. You know you didn't have to be stationary and miserable. So I took up to hang out with hippies and fucking drunks and train riders and made my way around America. Met a few interesting people. A few not so interesting people. Got in a couple of fights. Got my ass kicked a couple of times. Break my glasses about every six months due to one of those events. It's really hard actually being blind on the road. I'm legally blind.

Meet more of photographer Steven Hirsch's subjects here.

Like Cowen, Lane Kenworthy asks the question:

If we look across the rich nations, it turns out that there is no relationship between changes in income inequality and changes in the absolute incomes of low-end households. The reason is that income growth for poor households has come almost entirely via increases in net government transfers, and the degree to which governments have increased transfers seems to have been unaffected by changes in income inequality. (For more detail, see my piece [pdf] in the November-December issue of Challenge.)

Larison puts it in context. McCain is making fun of silly sounding earmarks again, including "$165,000 for maple syrup research in Vermont." Steinglass counters:

Vermont, the leading maple syrup producing state in America, produced 890,000 gallons this year. International demand is rising strongly, especially in Asia, and a poor harvest in 2008 pushed prices up to $65 per gallon in 2009 (according to USDA figures; a maple-syrup industry blog, and how awesome is that, did its own survey and found retail prices averaging $95 a gallon). Meanwhile, American producers lag far behind industry leader Quebec because of inefficient mom-and-pop organisation. Quebec taps a third of its maple trees; New York and Vermont tap 2% or less. Regulatory changes and industry reforms are needed to increase producer access to trees on public and large private lands. Increasing volatility in winter weather is creating boom-and-bust problems for producers. There are also some  promising innovations in tap technology. In sum, this is a promising industry for American agricultural exports worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Is this particular research programme worthy, or not? I don't know. Neither does Mr McCain.

Angus takes issue with this Hans Rosling video, which went viral a few weeks ago:

[P]eople, have you looked at the horizontal axis of his chart? The distance between $400 and $4000 is the same as the distance between $4000 and $40000. That is incredibly misleading. Properly plotted on a linear scale, it would be clear that there was way way way LESS income inequality in 1810 or that magic year of 1948 than there is in 2010. We are NOT living in an "age of convergence" with respect to per-capita incomes.

Felix Salmon cautions:

Buying internet companies is very, very hard: even if they are set to be very successful on their own, that’s no reason to believe that they will have similar success in-house. Google bought Foursquare back in 2005, when it was called Dodgeball, but then closed it down; only when its founders left Google and recreated the company as Foursquare on their own were they able to succeed.

Joel Wing mulls it:

Despite Iraqi and American attempts to forge better ties between Baghdad and Riyadh since 2003, the Saudis’ paranoia about Iran and their bias against Shiites, have prevented any thawing of relations. Instead, the kingdom has tried to keep Iraq’s government at bay diplomatically and economically, while both knowingly or tacitly supporting the insurgency, and backing Sunni parties to counter the Shiite ones. This has largely failed to change anything in Iraq, other than gain the ire of the Iraqi government. Unless some kind of nationalist coalition like Iyad Allawi’s comes to power, it seems that the Saudis will continue to give a cold shoulder to Iraq. That has an impact throughout the region, as Iraq will have a hard time gaining full acceptance in the larger Middle East until Saudi Arabia finally comes to terms with the fact that Shiites are going to be running Iraq for the foreseeable future.

The NYT's incredible interactive maps, which present new Census data, could easily eat up hours of your morning.

Wilkinson considers Tyler Cowen's shrewd essay on inequality and finance:

It would be lovely were some genius to offer us persuasive theoretical assurance that there exists some feasible system of political economy that creates at least as much wealth and welfare as does our own, but which is both more stable and more just because less easily "gamed" by ingenious profit-seekers. Until then, we must consider the unhappy possibility that our current, insufferable arrangement of institutions is the best we know how to do.

Today on the Dish, as polling showed unprecedented support for gays in the military, the House voted to repeal DADT. Sargent and a Dish reader helped Commandant Amos eat his Malkin-esque words over gay servicemembers. Choi buckled under the intense pressure of it all. DeMint threatened to torpedo the lame-duck session as the tax deal split the field of GOP presidential hopefuls. Douthat and Andrew took a long look at the Tea Party's place in these tough times. Reality checks on Obama's performance here and here.

Andrew chewed over the Assange arrest and furrowed his brow over a leak in Algeria. He also mulled over demographics in Israel/Palestine and contemplated the anti-family aspects of Jesus Christ.

Palin's polarization deepened even further, Seth Masket saw a silver lining in knee-jerk partisanship, Chris Beam clarified what bipartisanship really is, FNC was further exposed for its propaganda, and Breitbart's Big Government kept its blinders on. More on Orszag's government gravy train here and here. Ron Paul appeared prescient about the Fed and a reader responded to Megan's question about government force.

In assorted commentary, Josh Green spotlighted gay-rights champion Tim Gill, Jeremy Lott showed both sides of William F. Buckley, Avent pushed high-speed rail, Reihan tackled Diane Ravitch, two Ordinary Gentlemen talked slippery slopes, Tyler Cowen sparked a deep debate on inequality, Mike Meno explained why cigarettes are harder to get for teens than joints, and Jack Shafer delved into the intoxicating world of nutmeg.

The Pope enjoyed a purely heterosexual display of half-naked male gymnastics, HuffPo joined the Atlantic in turning a profit, Kevin Spacey cried foul for being recognized as gay, and Ben Crair investigated Holocaust games. Vagazzled hathos here and a video Malkin here. Zombie massacre here. VFYW here, FOTD here, and a particularly entertaining MHB here.

The door for getting "The Cannabis Closet" in time for Christmas is closing …

— C.B.