Month: April 2011

"It’s the left; it’s this culture of death. The far-left is livid about killing babies. They want to do this, they want to destroy … If a woman is a lesbian, what advantage does she have over a married woman? Or what deficiency does she have? … And so if these married women don’t have children, if they abort their babies, then that kind of puts them on a level playing field," – Pat Robertson.

Alex Massie says "it's daft to complain about too much coverage" of the royal wedding:

It's a big world out there and there's plenty of room for those who want no part of any of it and plenty of TV channels for them to watch too. But the suggestion, implicit in some of the commentary, that few people are interested in the wedding is not supported by the facts. On the contrary, few events are followed by as many people. That's the real story and it's a much stranger, more interesting, more human one than the idea that people aren't or shouldn't be interested in this.

Marc Lynch runs through our options:

The core of the problem is that on its own, the U.S. has very limited leverage over Damascus or events on the ground in Syria.  The administration has already done most of the few concrete things which have been suggested by its critics, including sharpened rhetoric, convening an emergency session of the UN Human Rights Council, and preparing targeted sanctions.  But since Syria has long been an American adversary in the region, such efforts have limited impact.  Rhetoric demanding political change in Damascus will largely fall on deaf ears since most people in the region already assume that the U.S. supports regime change in Syria, and wouldn't have the impact of similar statements about Mubarak, Qaddafi, or Saleh.  The U.S. already has a daunting array of sanctions in place against Damascus, leaving it little room for tightening. In short, even the strongest concrete policy proposals on offer are not likely to have much effect on Syria's course.  

The UN Security Council is failing to even condemn the escalating violence, which has claimed the lives of more than 450 Syrians in the past six weeks, several of whom are seen in the above video (via Azarmehr).

Jonathan Bernstein believes that Obama releasing the birth certificate will have no impact on the GOP 2012 race:

By the time we get to Iowa this winter, or even to the Ames straw poll this summer, all of this will be mostly forgotten. And rightly so. As far as the idea that Obama released the certificate in order to maneuver Republicans into acting ever more ridiculous and crazy, the evidence shows that they are already under heavy pressure to do this on their own in order to appeal to movement conservative activists. The President’s actions today don’t change that dynamic at all.

(Hat tip: Lane Moore)

Europe isn't as green as it appears. The Economist summarizes a new study:

[W]hile Europe may pride itself on emitting less carbon from its own territory than it did in 1990, from a consumption point of view the carbon embodied in imports from China alone all but cancels out the gain. In general the study finds that net embodied carbon imports into developed countries grew from 400m tonnes in 1990 to 1.6 billion tonnes in 2008—a growth rate faster than that of the world economy or global carbon emissions.

Overthinking It does what they do best:

What’s the economic calculus behind the Empire’s tactic of A) building a Death Star, B) intimidating planets into submission with the threat of destruction, and C) actually carrying through with said destruction if the planet doesn’t comply?

Doesn’t the Empire take a huge economic loss from the lost productivity of an entire planet? They were presumably paying taxes and providing resources to the rest of the Empire. Presumably the loss of that planet’s output would have to be made up by increased output from other planets that were either slacking in productivity due to rebellion or threatening to rebel and withdraw from the Empire altogether. It doesn’t seem to make good economic sense.

Susannah Breslin interviews Staff Sergeant Jason Deckman about Graffiti Of War, a project to collect the art and messages left behind by troops:

It's not a drawing that someone made in their sketchbook. It's not a painting on canvas. It's spray paint and Sharpie markers on blast walls, inside of the Porta Potties, on the backs of vehicles, graffiti that are tagged everywhere, on enemy vehicles, memorials that people have put together to remember the guys that didn't come back. It's all that, kind of created in the heat of the moment – of pride, or anger, or sadness. … It's a way of, when they were there, saying, "Here I am. We were here. After we're gone, this will still be here."

(Image: by Richard Kelly, Camp Anaconda, Balad, Iraq)

Ann Friedman insists that women "need better birth control":

A 2004 survey found that 20 percent of women were not satisfied with the contraceptive method they were using. On average, women try four different types of contraception during their lifetime. Studies continue to show that even low-dose hormonal contraception exacerbates depression and decreases libido. And last year, a study in the Journal of Family Practice found that only 57 percent of women on the Pill were happy with it.

A reader writes:

This is just STAGGERING footage.  Thoughts and prayers going out to the people of Alabama and the other states that have been affected by this massive storm system.

Matt Stopera collected seven more clips of the mile-wide tornado. Another reader:

While the footage of the Tuscaloosa tornado is unbelievable, that same supercell dropped an even bigger one just north of downtown Birmingham. So far the death toll from the storms across the South is 193 and still climbing, with 128 of those in Alabama alone.  Just a terrible day for our state.