Month: April 2011

Weigel shifts from saying that the Trig story was “flogged to death” by the MSM to saying that “it did not take much flogging.” So which is it, Dave? Or are you making this up as you go along? He even cites the ADN’s failed attempt to debunk the story as proof that there was no story. But they were stonewalled by a furious Palin, and staggered by her defensiveness and ran no story at all. Then this amazing line:

Because Palin stopped holding public office in the summer of 2009, and because the stakes were so low, this stuff never really took off.

You mean while she was promoting a book detailing bizarre details of the story, was regarded for months as the top GOP opposition leader, and commanded massive media attention, there was no need to investigate this? And the stakes were so low? You mean the exposure of possibly the greatest hoax in American history would have had no impact on the MSM or the RNC or McCain or Harper Collins? This is now just perverse hostility to journalism. Then he admits that his criterion for pursuing a story is entirely dependent on whether the parties make an issue of it:

Did I just admit that I paid more attention to birtherism, in part, because some Republicans made an issue out of it? Sure, that was part of it. You need some impetus for investigating rumors.

How about the impetus of crazy on-the-record stories by a candidate about a central part of her message? And note how this passive attitude skews the news. The GOP makes a huge fuss about many crazy stories – because they’re crazy. So Weigel covers them. The Democrats? Not so nuts. So Weigel doesn’t cover them. And one wonders how a liberal MSM actually enables the Republican media edge?

Jon Stewart, you have Exhibit A. A journalist bored because a story isn’t being pushed by Republican fanatics.

Greenwald checks in on anti-American sentiment in Egypt:

Whatever else is true, it is simply a fact that — with a handful of exceptions — perceptions of the U.S. in the Muslim world are as negative as ever. One can debate how significant that is, but what is undebatable is that a central promise of the Obama presidency has failed to manifest there and, as a result, few things would more potently subvert U.S. policy in that region that the spread of democracy.

Stephen M. Walt worries about Butters' enthusiasm for taking out Qaddafi:

Targeted assassinations of foreign despots may seem like a cheap and efficient way of solving today's problem, but we won't enjoy living in a world where foreign adversaries think attacking U.S. leaders (including the president and his inner circle) is a perfectly legitimate way of doing business.

And notice that making targeted killings more legitimate tends to level the international playing field: you don't have to be a powerful or wealthy state to organize a few hit squads and cause lots of trouble for your enemies. So even if this attempt at "decapitation" were to succeed in the short-term, the longer-term consequences may not be quite so salutary.

Alex Tabarrok keeps the debate alive:

[T]he IMF estimates are below others in the literature which estimate an elasticity of 0.2 to 0.3, meaning that a 10% increase in price would reduce demand by 2 to 3 percent, still small but three times the IMF estimates. Moreover, the US estimates tend to be higher still in the range of 0.4-0.5. All of the estimates are certainly low so we are not going to solve the climate change problem overnight with a tax on oil.  I’m not sure where the surprise is, however. Oil is necessary for civilization–given today’s technology–so people aren’t going to give it up easily.

Adam Ozimek dives deeper into the literature. McArdle highlights another negative. She writes that "such taxes are almost always regressive, and though there are various ways we could make them less so, none of them fully solve the problem."

Douthat tackled the hell question this week:

Atheists have license to scoff at damnation, but to believe in God and not in hell is ultimately to disbelieve in the reality of human choices. If there’s no possibility of saying no to paradise then none of our no’s have any real meaning either. They’re like home runs or strikeouts in a children’s game where nobody’s keeping score.

My view here. Sean Carroll doesn't subscribe to the same vision:

I don’t know of any theological descriptions of Hell that involve some version of parole hearings at regular intervals. The usual assumption is that it’s an eternal sentence. For all the pious musings about the centrality of human choice, few of Hell’s advocates allow for some version of that choice to persist after death. Seventy years or so on Earth, with unclear instructions and bad advice; infinity years in Hell for making the wrong decisions.

And Adam Serwer questions the utility of hell:

Judaism makes few claims to understanding what happens after you die. Nevertheless, Jews adhere to a faith that called upon its adherents to act morally without a vivid conception of Hell for more than a millenium before the rise of Christianity.

And that's proof you don't need hell to feel guilt.

A reader writes:

The President absolutely did the right thing by not releasing his long-form birth certificate earlier.  Actually, I'm a little disappointed that he acquiesced.  The Birthers' theories are demonstrably untrue even without the long-form certificate.  His releasing it doesn't add any new information to the debate, it only lends an unfortunate amount of dignity to a racist smear.  The MSM have had all the information they need to completely squash the myth, and they have not.  That's their failure, not his.

It seems to me that Obama's decision not to provide the long form certificate when he could have added more fuel to the racist smear. And this is a president in favor of transparency in government. Another writes:

I wasted a lot of time once long ago obliterating birther “logic” on a forum, including a bunch of time digging through the statutes, so I take exception to your post.  Getting the LFBC released truly is exceptional. The only thing that can be released by the State is the copy already provided.  It is a certified copy. It isn’t even clear that the two governors of HI were legally allowed to inspect the certificate and only those with a direct interest would ever otherwise be allowed to inspect the cert.  (Read the statute here.) So don’t play that this is all politics and rope-a-dope; this is really and truly quite an exception.

I've covered the relevant statute. Obama had the right to seek the full form. The law states that. And while this may be a rare case, it is not an exception to the law, as I read the statute. It is the law. Another:

You say, "Because a president has to put his public responsibilities before his pride and his privacy. That's the price of the job – to defuse or debunk conspiracy theorists or just skeptics with all the relevant information you have." This is absolutely wrong. 

Obama went through the exact same process every other president in recent memory did.  He proved his citizenship to the satisfaction of the relevant authorities.  No other president has EVER released a copy of their birth certificate to the general public.  The demands made by the Birthers were simply unreasonable, and obviously so.  To claim that Obama was being somehow cagey by not releasing them until now assumes that the Birthers were asking an honest question.  They were not.

How do you know that every skeptic was a disingenous cynic? Just because they were Republicans? Another:

Your position is, I am afraid, not well thought out. What you're really saying is that a decent man who happened to be President of the United States must respond to every scurrilous attack made on him, that such a person has no right to privacy, nor any right to personal dignity, nor – and this is really appalling – any presumption of innocence.

And we already know, don't we, that the noise will simply get louder: the claims will become more and more vicious, more unanswerable?  The grades, when released, will be doubted; the Registrar's accuracy will be challenged; the teachers who gave those grades will be sought out and harried; if they are found to be liberals, their credentials too will be doubted, lied about, searched and pored over and found wanting.

Another:

To no surprise, the birth certificate accomplished nothing. The writers and commenters over at WND are still in denial, with mentions of a lack of a footprint and the race-listing of his father as "African":

If the document proves valid, it could answer the questions raised by those who have alleged he was not actually born in Hawaii. But it also could prove his ineligibility because of its references to his father. Some of the cases challenging Obama have explained that he was a dual citizen through his father at his birth, and they contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born citizens.

Nothing will satisfy them. This was pointless.

But many in the middle confused about this will now be more likely to dismiss Birtherism. It was not pointless. Another:

I think you have been obsessing on Trig’s birth certificate for too long. Obama released the short form three years ago, state officials attested to both the short form and the long form, but the birthers were not satisfied.  Sure he could have released the long form at any time, but FOX would still lead the story with "WHAT the White House says is the long form." Maybe he should have included a video of the delivery.

This isn’t about his birth certificate and never has been. It is about his skin color, due to either out-and-out racism or in most cases the many folks who are not comfortable with how the country is changing and Obama’s skin color puts those changes front and center. 

(Image hat tip: Laura Nahmias)

You ready?

Alex Pareene looks around for cases of preferential treatment in higher education:

Let us take, as an example, the story of a student so obviously unqualified, so transparently unworthy, that a book was written about what his admittance into Harvard said about the sorry behavior of supposedly elite colleges. That student — that dull, below-average student who somehow made his way into Harvard — was Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Kushner's father, real estate developer Charles Kushner, bought Jared his Harvard acceptance. It cost him $2.5 million. (Kushner later went to jail for tax evasion and witness tampering, so it was also, technically, dirty money that bought Trump's daughter's husband's entry into the Ivy League.)

John Cook quips, "Trump ought to sic those investigators of his on this case and find out if Obama was raised by insanely wealthy people." Well, yes. Points taken. But I don't have a problem with wealthy individuals using their money to get more information on public figures. That used to be called journalism; and if journalists are busy preening about their restraint, rather than proving their anti-establishment tenacity, more power to the outsiders.

His media diet is almost entirely old-school:

Since my brain really only works in the morning, I try to keep that time free for writing and thinking and don't read any media at all until lunchtime, when I treat myself to The New York Times–the paper edition. … I fear that I’m on the extreme low end of media consumption. I think that this is because I grew up in a family that didn’t get a daily newspaper, didn’t have a television, and never went to the movies. We just read books and went for walks. Not much has changed.

Dartmouth, England, 6 pm.

This has to be one of my favorites of all time. So much Englishness compressed into one image. Yes, I’m homesick a little – but finally heading over in June.