Freddie DeBoer asks why a feature on gentrification didn't interview any poor people:
This is a several-thousand word article on the relationship between race and socioeconomic class, and about the tensions between old and new residents and poor and rich residents of a city and a neighborhood. Yet in those thousands of words there isn't a single interview with a poor, long-term, black resident. It's a glaring omission.
"This is a guy that's in trouble with the law, he's got lawsuits up the gazoo for trying to help you with your freedom," – Barbara Gonzalez, founder of the Bayshore Tea Party, on why James O'Keefe wouldn't permit a reporter to videotape his speech to the group.
Leave it to Frank Gaffney to get paranoid about Libya and the precedent it's setting:
What I find particularly concerning is the prospect that what we might call the Qaddafi Precedent will be used in the not-to-distant future to justify and threaten the use of U.S. military forces against an American ally: Israel.
… I am praying that Barack Obama and his anti-Israel troika of female advisors will not take us all down a road that seems ripe for another, ominous application of this precedent, with truly horrific repercussions – for Israel, for the United States and for freedom-loving people elsewhere. A Congress that was effectively sidelined by Team Obama in the current crisis had better engage fully, decisively and quickly if it is to head off such a disastrous reprise.
What kind of fevered mind leaps immediately from Libya to … Israel?
A reader writes:
I am completely at a loss with your analysis of the Libya situation. It seems to me that Obama's handling of it is as deliberate and "cool" as anything else he does. He waited until he was ready, until it was obvious that the uprising needed help, then he acted. And yes, he went to Brazil. It's his job!
He sure doesn't look as if he thinks he just launched a new war. Maybe he thinks the avoidance of a massacre in Benghazi has already vindicated the mission – since that was its proximate goal.
(Photo: Saul Loeb/Getty.)
After doing math on the NYT's new strategy, Felix Salmon remains skeptical:
There are two theological statements here, which I hear a lot from NYT journalists. The first is the idea that if you can charge for certain content, then obviously you should. And the second is the idea that charging for content will automatically “ensure future success.” Neither is exactly self-evident. Nor, for that matter, is Arthur Sulzberger’s idea that if the NYT suddenly turns the meter to zero in the wake of a big event like 9/11, then the readers will come flocking back the minute they’re able to. They won’t: once you become habituated to avoiding the NYT, and learn to get your news elsewhere, you’ll continue to do that no matter where the meter is set.
As only XKCD could execute it. His disclaimer:
I’m not an expert in radiation and I’m sure I’ve got a lot of mistakes in here, but there’s so much wild misinformation out there that I figured a broad comparison of different types of dosages might be good anyway. I don’t include too much about the Fukushima reactor because the situation seems to be changing by the hour, but I hope the chart provides some helpful context.
Megan Scully does some math:
With allies expected to shoulder some of the bill, the initial stages of taking out Libya’s air defenses could ultimately cost U.S.-led coalition forces between $400 million and $800 million, according to a report released by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments earlier this month.
(Hat tip: Weigel. Photo: by Scott Campbell from his show Noblesse Oblige)
Weigel isn't expecting it:
"Before any further military commitments are made," said Boehner, "the Administration must do a better job of briefing members of Congress and communicating to the American people about our mission in Libya and how it will be achieved." If he wanted to, Boehner could have put a line in there about a vote in Congress. He didn't. As long as this is a pricey multinational effort to destroy weapons and buildings as a way of aiding Libyan rebels — as long as it is short — there is no call from Congress for more oversight.
A reader writes:
Actually, if you read the NASA page closely (and click on the link at the bottom), you will see that the photo was taken on January 19, 2011 and not Saturday night, when the perigee moon was out.
Here is NASA's "Image of the Day" from Saturday, showing the super perigee moon above the Lincoln Memorial. Here are hundreds of other photos from Flickr users around the globe.
"I would simply say the United States is not omnipotent. If we were, we would be everywhere, and we would be consistent, and we would stop every slaughter on the planet, and we would be in the Congo right now. And why aren’t we in the Ivory Coast? Ivory Coast had an election, the dictator lost the election, he refused to accept the other side, he’s been shooting people in the streets. I mean, where are we going to go with this? I think you have to have two things in order to act. You have to have a moral justification, you’re protecting slaughter, maybe preventing a genocide. But you also have to have a strategic rationale. Otherwise, we will spend ourselves into penury, into destitution, and into very great sorrow by deploying all over the world. So I mean, it seems to me we have to be extremely hard-headed as well as idealistic about this. You have to have a moral rationale and a strategic one. If you only have one and not the other, you don’t act," – Charles Krauthammer.
It's been years since I heard Krauthammer have any reservations about any military intervention in the Arab world. It's amazing what a president of a different party will do.
The Dish 