Month: January 2011

"I believe the American experiment is in mortal peril because of the debt we have coming…. This is more frightening than even the Soviet nuclear threat, which would have been more horrible. If we go broke, we’ll still be alive, but the probability was so small. In this case, the damage, the catastrophe, will be very, very severe, and the probability – I mean, and it’s inexorable," – Mitch Daniels, Indiana Governor.

Lisa Margonelli worries about national gas prices.

Nyhan wants them:

When will Gail Collins come up with some new material? Her end-of-year quiz includes her 12th Bristol Palin reference since October 2008, her 13th reference to Mitt Romney putting his dog on the roof of his car since August 2007, and fourth joke about John Boehner crying in the last month. She only became a columnist in July 2007 and she's already recycling material. Even by the low standards of op-ed columnists, it's been an incredibly fast decline toward intellectual and creative exhaustion.

But term limits only make sense when there are a limited number of spots, and someone's longevity is preventing someone else getting a point across. That was true a decade ago; it couldn't be less true today. The institutional sinecures keep disappearing. Eventually, only Richard Cohen will be left.

Berkeley, California, 1.36 pm

Kevin Drum mulls Chrystia Freeland's article and frets about a collapse of civic responsibility. Felix Salmon strikes me as more on the mark:

When it comes to US plutocrats, most of them are very similar to the Russian oligarchs who seized their country’s natural resources — they’re bankers and hedge-fund managers who seized their country’s financial resources. They produced no goods, and they created no jobs — quite the opposite. And so it makes sense for Americans who have lost their jobs and their hope to reclaim those financial resources, through mechanisms like a wealth tax or a financial transactions tax. The Silicon Valley elite would happily pay such things. And if the angry bankers went off to destabilize some other financial system, they wouldn’t actually be missed.

Building off my post on Obama's favorables, Bernstein looks ahead:

There's plenty of time for Obama to wind up with a Reagan-like cakewalk or a Carter-level debacle, or anything in between.  The key takeaway, as it has been all of 2010, is that Obama is probably doing a bit better than the economy alone would predict, and certainly isn't doing worse.  If the economy is better in 2011-2012 than it was in 2009-2010, and no major negative external events intervene, and he continues to do the other things he's doing that are working, he's likely to be comfortably re-elected — but those are three huge questions.

A reader writes:

I feel for struggle and frustration, I think it's her understanding of the purpose of adoption that is "broken."   Adoption does not exist  to find children for parents like her (or like me, who also hopes to build a family through adoption.).  Adoption exists to find families for children.  Her post drips with a sense of being entitled to the child she wants, free of risks, complications, and "burdens", but no such entitlement exists. 

On the other hand, every child, no matter how "broken" he or she is, is entitled to the love and security of a forever family.  If the adoption system is broken, the evidence of that is the children languishing in foster care or in orphanages around the world, not that it can't serve up perfect newborns on demand to infertile couples.

Another writes:

Your reader wants to know why infertile couples are asked to take on risks that fertile couples aren't? Because life isn't fair. But she isn't the one who got the short end of the stick. You know who has a much harder go of it? All those children in foster care with parents who "refuse to give up their kid until they've broken them." First they were born to parents ill-equipped to deal with them; then, one way or another, they ended up in the hands of the state; and now some woman on the Dish is calling them broken. And we're supposed to feel sorry for her?

Another:

You have really waded into some fraught emotional stuff with the adoption topic.

While I feel great sympathy for the couple with 11 miscarriages, I have to say that the writer is completely confused about the relative risks of adoption. Let's be clear here: they subjected themselves to eleven miscarriages and yet they believe "adoptive parents are forced to assume significant risks"? Unbelievable.

I am an adoptive parent. I won't deny that there are risks. We went to China to adopt our 6-year-old daughter with severe scoliosis, understanding she might exhibit severe disorders, and that our lives might become incredibly difficult. Fortunately, the experience has been fantastic. She is spunky, joyful, brave, and beautiful.

No matter how you become a parent, there is risk. Autism, retardation, injury, learning disorders, addiction, or maybe your biological kid is just a perpetual dumb-ass who disappoints you on many levels throughout your life. For your reader to assert that adoption is somehow profoundly risky, while biological parenthood is not (therefore motivating their umpteenth attempt ending in miscarriage) is tragic and disappointing. But I suppose that is just the biological drive we all have to propagate our lines. We believe deep down in our DNA that our biological children will be perfected versions of ourselves, while strange children are a threat.

We have to move beyond that. Go adopt. Everyone. You will find wonderful children. Sometimes they will be broken, just like our own biological children, and you will make your lives harder than they need be. But it will be worth it.

Another:

Having adopted two children as newborns, I completely agree that the adoption system is broken. Still, I find myself offended at the idea that in some rosy past nice healthy white teenagers relinquished their babies to nice healthy white infertile couples and everything was perfect.

Adoption is not for sissies. My partner and I did experience enormous financial losses (but nothing compared to the infertility treatments). We experienced having an adoption fall through due to a last-minute change of heart. We adopted two kids who don't racially match us or each other. They both have learning disorders, both have been diagnosed with ADHD and one with mental health problems.

However, giving birth to kids is not for sissies either. My nice white middle class friends have given birth to: a kid who developed leukemia, a kid with a cancerous brain tumor, a kid who developed juvenile diabetes and three kids who were diagnosed as bipolar. Raising children is not for sissies. Anything, and everything can and does go wrong. If the evil truth about adoption today is too scary for you, then think twice about your desire to have children.

P.S. While I have never experienced so many challenges, I would do it all again in a second. My kids are awesome.

(Photo: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty)

Alexis Madrigal marvels at this video's path through the Internet:

[The YouTube video has] received more than four million views in the last day and is the most-watched video on the site today. The man's voice is amazing and Americans love a good redemption story. Williams says in the video that he used to be addicted to drugs but he's been clean for two years now, yet still unable to get a job.

So, Reddit users organized around finding the man a job, actually raising money and coming up with gigs for him. And while all this was going on, Williams himself — being homeless — was nowhere to be found. People went out looking for him and eventually he was found, no doubt a little stunned that millions of people on the Internet had suddenly taken an interest in him.

At least today, he's got no shortage of work.

In some ways, it's just a tiny reflection of the power of the web to discover and advance … talent.

Eye-opening.

Timothy Kincaid runs through different scenarios. Bmaz at Firedoglake analyzes:

[T]his California Supreme Court certification process is likely to take some time. Six months would be a miracle, a year is far more likely. First off, the California Supreme Court does not have to accept consideration, and there will be a briefing process on whether they even should do that. Assuming they then accept consideration on the merits, and I do think it extremely likely they will, there will then be a full briefing schedule on the merits before any decision.

… I still look for the California Supreme Court to certify this issue, and my best guess is they will find standing, the case will be sent back to the 9th Circuit for a merits decision and the 9th will uphold Vaughn Walker. 

Lyle Denniston offers his thoughts. This I'd not heard before: 

If it turns out in the end that no one has a legal right to be in federal court to defend Prop. 8′s constitutionality, it is unclear — at least for now — what would happen to U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker’s decision in August striking down the ban under the federal Constitution.  The two sides in the case disagree on whether that ruling would stand, unreviewed by a higher court, or whether it would have to be wiped off the judicial books.  The Circuit Court mentioned that disagreement, but did not seek to solve it.

Ethan Leib:

The best explanation for the 9th Circuit decision is not legal but political.  If the 9th Circuit can dilly-dally just long enough, we may be able to moot the Prop 8 federal case with gay marriage in California before it gets to the US Supreme Court.