Month: March 2011

Glen McGregor found a gem of a job posting, by Matt Doig of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune:

[I]f you’re the type of sicko who likes holing up in a tiny, closed office with reporters of questionable hygiene to build databases from scratch by hand-entering thousands of pages of documents to take on powerful people and institutions that wish you were dead, all for the glorious reward of having readers pick up the paper and glance at your potential prize-winning epic as they flip their way to the Jumble… well, if that sounds like journalism Heaven, then you’re our kind of sicko.

(Hat tip: Mother Jones)

A reader writes:

I read with interest the reader comments regarding Pawlenty. I truly see how some people would view him as the unassuming guy who understands blue-collar types, an "aw shucks" Midwesterner. And in the realm of the current Republican crop, he will definitely come across as one of the candidates that could actually run the country, mainly because he's fairly unexciting and even keeled.

However, he'd have a hard time winning his very own state.

Minnesota is in the midst a huge fight and potential government shutdown because Pawlenty left us with a $5 billion deficit, all while insisting that he had balanced the budget through his accounting shifts and "fees," along with illegally cutting some spending on his own. Even the guy who ran to replace him, Tom Emmer, tried to peddle that nonsense (that there was no budget deficit) and got defeated by Mark Dayton in a year where Republicans ended up with control of both the house and senate. Pawlenty has become more rigid and right wing as he runs, and his ambitions were taken out on our state. He's just not popular here.

Another writes:

In writing about Tim Pawlenty, I urge you to follow the Minnesota discussion closely. He is not that popular here.  He was all talk and no action as governor, and lived only on his refusal to increase state taxes.  Local taxes went up significantly as a result, and services and quality of life deteriorated.  The Minneapolis Tribune had an editorial the other day using these concerns against him.  However, he looks good until people look him over closely.

Also, the 2006 election was anything but an endorsement of Pawlenty's performance as governor. He won a three-way race against Hatch, the Democratic attorney general, and Hutchinson, the Independent Party candidate and a former Democratic finance commissioner (Hutchinson probably can be understood as an English Liberal-Dem).  Hatch made several gaffes, including dissing his female running mate, in the last ten days before the election.  Pawlenty won a plurality by about one percent of the vote.

Another:

As the state tried desperately to balance its books – both when T-Paw as a leader in the legislature, and under his administrations – the gimmicks he came up with were never enough (defer school payments, raid the cigarette settlement fund, etc) so they slashed aid to cities.  This aid to cities was a deal made not that long ago to reduce once-onerous property taxes, recognizing that property tax tends to be regressive and hardest on those on fixed incomes.

Well, under eight years of Pawlenty, property taxes have surged.  I pay 250% more than when I bought my house in 1996.  Two-hundred-and-fifty friggin' percent!  Sure, T-Paw can mouth his bogus, "I never raised taxes" claim.  In the narrowest, Bill Clinton "I never…" legalist sense of the word, Timmy didn't, I suppose.  But ask a retired plumber homeowner who still smokes?  He knows the truth.

Another:

Most importantly, Pawlenty simply went AWOL during most of his last 18 months in office.  He had already concluded that he had no future in Minnesota, so he began traveling the world in preparation for his next job, all while accepting his Minnesota Governor's salary and benefits. Pawlenty will never again be elected to any job (not even dog-catcher) in the state of Minnesota. If nominated, he will certainly be one of the first presidential candidates unable to carry his own state.

No objective observer could possibly see his history as a record of accomplishment. It is hard to believe that his home state's overwhelming disapproval of Pawlenty and his track record will not come to more serious scrutiny as the election cycle progresses.

(Photo: Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty strolls the grounds at the Iowa State Fair August 12, 2010 in Des Moines, Iowa. Tim Pawlenty is speculated to be a likely Republican candidate for president in 2012. By Steve Pope/Getty Images)

The 28-member alliance is taking control of the no-fly zone. Ackerman calls it a "victory for President Obama," though he explains how reorganizing the new command structure is "going to be complicated." Scott Lucas is more circumspect:

Some advocates of intervention, such as Juan Cole, declare this morning, "Nato Comes to the Rescue". It could be argued, however, that this is a fig leaf of international bureaucracy and politics. The US will stay lead and carry out the bulk of the military intervention, but Washington needs the cloak — given the Obama Administration's declaration that it is at the front for "days, not weeks" — that it is handing over command to alliance partners.

More reason for Cole's optimism:

The United Arab Emirates has now committed 12 fighter-jets to doing patrols, joining Qatar, which has pledged to begin flying missions this weekend.

David Link cheers the study's findings:

When leaders get too far out of touch with the people they’re supposed to lead, they lose their credibility.  The Vatican has credibility on many other, real moral issues, but its positions on sexuality have become bizarre through neglect or just stubbornness.  Catholics can freely ignore the Vatican since it has no real enforcement authority.  They can go to church (or not) for the good things the church stands for, and shake their heads at the more ludicrous positions.

A reader is on the same page:

Another point to consider: How many of us Catholics have stopped going to church regularly because we don't like the Church's anti-gay agenda?

(Photo: Pope Benedict XVI speaks to journalist aboard the plane flying from Italy to Santiago de Compostela, on November 6, 2010 prior to a two-day visit in Spain. Benedict XVI lands in Spain today to reclaim a bastion of the Church from the lure of quick divorce, abortion rights and gay marriage. By Christophe Simon/AFP/Getty Images)

Today on the Dish, Andrew deconstructed the divisions on the right's foreign policy, Wilkinson weighed the suffering factor in Libya, Julian Sanchez connected Bush and Obama on universal morality, and Andy Bacevich concentrated on removing Qaddafi. Andrew began to understand his pessimism as stemming from the Irish belief in Sod's law, and wondered if Obama had meep-meeped him again. Larison abandoned hope for an anti-war right and theorized why Germany didn't veto the UN resolution, and Rory Stewart stuck it to both pro and anti-interventionist sides. Ackerman wanted us to call the war in Libya a war, Adam Garfinkle critiqued our slipshod strategy, and Fox battled CNN on the other Libyan front. A new report outlined the torture under Bush as a form of warfare, rather than an attempt to stop a ticking time bomb, and Heather Hurlburt distrusted the Libyan endgame. Misurata took a turn for the worse, the rebel force is smaller than expected, and Libya isn't WWII. Twenty thousand may have marched in Syria, Assad may be caving, but the violence ratcheted up.

Catholics favor gay marriage (even the ones who attend church weekly), and Andrew held out hope for a change in DOMA and immigration policy. Andrew soaked up the results of the Coalition government's austerity measures, Nick Clegg left his mic on, and Andy Sumner examined international poverty. A straight, Catholic Republican student in Indiana supports gay marriage, Pareene got giddy over gay Republican candidate Fred Karger, and readers didn't underestimate T-Paw. Julian Sanchez pondered copyright and Google Books, Caitlin Truman endorsed euthanasia for the dead relationship, and a judge grappled with sentencing based on numbers alone. LSD confronts you with yourself, Arizona brought a tank to stop a cockfight, Dana Goldstein admired a charter school's dedication to diversity, and Andrew was off to celebrate the new pro-faith show of "Book Of Mormon." Groupon offered solutions for being hungry or bored, Camille Paglia praised Liz Taylor's body, and Lileks found a man who'd never heard of an iPad. A paywall is less humiliating than a pledge drive, and this doctor wanted to solve your symptoms the tech way.

Chart of the day here, quotes for the day here, here, here, and here, VFYW here, MHB here, and FOTD here.

— Z.P.

In another must-read column, Kristof highlights the positive signs of progress in Libya. His broader view:

Granted, intervention will be inconsistent. We’re more likely to intervene where there are also oil or security interests at stake. But just as it’s worthwhile to feed some starving children even if we can’t reach them all, it’s worth preventing some massacres or genocides even if we can’t intervene every time.

Goldblog tweaks Kristof's portrayal of Libyan and Iraqi attitudes toward intervention:

Just as a parenthetical, I doubt Nick Kristof was talking to the same Iraqis I was talking to before the 2003 invasion; the most oppressed Iraqis, the twenty percent of the country that is Kurdish, seemed fairly unanimous in their support for military intervention. You would have supported intervention, too, if your people had been the victims of a genocide.

But never mind that for the moment; if it is true that Libyans almost-uniformly support Western intervention to stop their monstrous dictator from slaughtering innocent people, then the argument against humanitarian intervention grows much, much weaker.

(Photo: A Libyan rebel gestures on March 24, 2011, as they try to retake the strategic eastern oil town of Ajdabiya from troops loyal to Moamer Kadhafi. By Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images)

The British deputy prime minister – and leader of the Liberal Democrats – is the latest casualty:

At the end of a question and answer session with pharmacy employees, the PM and the DPM were asked about where we’d all be in 2015. David Cameron said in a jokey closing remark that they’d probably be having election TV leaders’ debates and that this time it might be ”a bit better natured between the two of us.” The two men then take the applause and walk off the stage …

BUT Nick Clegg forgets he has his microphone on and says to David Cameron as they leave the room: "If we keep doing this we won’t find anything to bloody disagree on in the bloody TV debates."

Footage after the jump:

Despite a high turnout of Syrians and preliminary signs of concession by the Assad government, today was an especially bloody day:

Security forces opened fire on hundreds of youths on the outskirts of Deraa on Wednesday, witnesses said, after nearly a week of protests in which seven civilians had already died. The main hospital in Deraa, near the Jordanian border, had received the bodies of at least 37 protesters killed on Wednesday, a hospital official said. That brings the number killed to at least 44 in a week of protests.

The Jerusalem Post is putting that figure at more than 100. The above video "shows protesters carrying their friend's bloodied bodies through the streets as gunshots can be heard in the background." Enduring America has several more clips of today's bloodshed. After the jump is graphic footage posted yesterday:

Heather Hurlburt explains how she thinks about Libya:

I am less frantic about the endgame than many observers, not because I am more sanguine but because very often planners who have a clear endgame in mind are deluding themselves anyway. (The architects of the Iraq War believed they had thought through how everything would play out.). But that brings me to the largest point. International affairs are messy. Policy solutions are suboptimal. Different actors have interests which align only partially. And military responses of necessity involve killing.

Pakistani Christian minority leader J. Salik sprinkles ash over his body to protest against US pastor Terry Jones, in Islamabad on March 24, 2011. Pakistan has strongly condemned the "deliberate desecration" of the Koran by a US evangelical preacher in a church in Florida, calling it a setback for global efforts to promote harmony. The burning was carried out by pastor Wayne Sapp under the supervision of Terry Jones, who last year drew condemnation over his aborted plan to ignite a pile of the Islamic holy books to mark the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. By Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images.