Month: May 2011

A reader writes:

We already invented a better birth control.  It's called the IUD.  It's almost perfect, with minimal side effects after implantation (although that can hurt quite a bit), and almost 100% efficacy, with no possibility for user error.  It falls short of perfection only because of the minute possibility of expulsion.

Another writes:

I thought it was common knowledge that pharma doesn’t invest in new contraceptive technology because fear of lawsuits. Remember the Dalkon shield?

From Wiki:

The Dalkon Shield was a contraceptive intrauterine device (IUD) developed by the Dalkon Corporation and marketed by the A.H. Robins Company. The Dalkon Shield was found to cause severe injury to a disproportionately large percentage of its users, which eventually led to numerous lawsuits in which juries awarded millions of dollars in compensatory and punitive damages. … More than 300,000 lawsuits were filed against the A.H. Robins Company – the largest tort liability case since asbestos, and the federal judge, Miles W. Lord, made history with the judgments, personal liabilities and public rebukes of the company heads.

Today on the Dish, Andrew dismantled the desperate torture arguments, and heralded the NYT's breakthrough in actually using the word. Andrew backed Obama's decision not to release the photos, Palin came out swinging, and Bush made important announcements. We contemplated what happens when you cut the head off the snake, admired the photo that encapsulates Obama's leadership, and critiqued the media's coverage of the raid. We tracked Obama's tiny bump, grabbed all the info we could from Osama's lair, and Larison stood by Pakistan. Some teenagers had questions on Osama, teachers grappled with explaining it to students, DiA defended the celebrations, and Douthat argued American decline belongs to us, not bin Laden. Syria remained under seige, and Mona Yacoubian argued Assad has lost the fight. Alex Massie reconsidered our the war in Afghanistan, Andrew invoked Niebuhr on Christian forgiveness, and Bradley Manning got his clothes back.

Readers requested a ban on Limbaugh coverage, Weigel hyped the first Republican debate, we previewed Britain's vote change vote, and Joyner didn't appreciate the pundit ratings. Werner Herzog could never believe in capital punishment, the US doubled our water productivity, and Zuckerberg slimed his way out of the tax question. The South suffered economically after the Civil War, we charted the decline of the working man, and scientists weren't incentivized to make new drugs. Richard and John celebrated 61 years of togetherness, drummers brains beat our own, and we celebrated a month at the Beast.

Gaffe of the night redux here, Moore award reax here, Hathos alert here, quote for the day here, Trump bait here, MHB here, and FOTD here.

–Z.P.

The heart-warming story of the Ham family deserves a wider audience. Jim Burroway reflects:

Sen. Rick Santorum this week denounced adoption and foster parenting by gay couples, saying adoption was a privilege and not a right. The thing is though, I suspect the Hams would agree: it is an enormous privilege, a blessing even. And one that all children deserve, regardless of how their parents are configured.

Alex Massie has a long, thoughtful post:

[B]in Laden's death must prompt a reappraisal of Afghan policy. There will be many Americans who now feel, deep down, the mission has been accomplished. The latest review of policy had seemed likely to recommend, yet again, more of the same. The kaleidoscope has now shifted. The upshot of that is a boost for Vice-President Biden's preference for a smaller number of troops in Afghanistan, more or less exclusively charged with anti-terrorism operations. At present the ratio of allied troops to al-Qaeda targets runs at more than 1,000:1. It is hard to see this as an efficient allocation of over-stretched resources.

Weigel's reporting suggests little chance of a major rethink. He writes that the "the discussion in Washington … has been about how Bin Laden's death can validate the policies already in effect."

Radley Balko argued a couple days ago that bin Laden won because he "forever changed who we are as a country." Ross Douthat counters:

[I]t’s important to keep the costs of our post-9/11 wars in context. Even if you accept the highest estimates of the price tag (in which, for instance, Bin Laden gets some of the blame for the housing bubble, because it was enabled by post-9/11 interest rates), it’s still clear that the bulk of our current liabilities need to be laid, not at Al Qaeda’s door, but at our own. The War on Terror didn’t give us the financial crisis or the looming entitlement crunch, and if the first decade of the 21st century era gets remembered as the beginning of a long era of American decline, Washington, Wall Street and Main Street will all deserve much, much more blame than Osama Bin Laden deserves credit. He didn’t do this to us; we’ve done it to ourselves.

Alex Salmond, Scottish National Party Leader, is reflected in the glasses of a member of public during campaigning for the Scottish Parliamentary elections on May 3, 2011 in Dundee, Scotland. The political parties are on campaign trail on the final two full days of campaigning ahead of polling day. By Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images.

A history professor writes:

Perhaps the most important factor in the South’s economic underdevelopment was the fact that emancipation, while a milestone in human freedom, was an economic calamity.  There were approximately 4 million slaves, with an average value of $1,000.  Emancipation meant the destruction of $4 billion of Southern capital.  Slavery as a symbol of status had encouraged successful professionals and entrepreneurs to invest in slaves rather than industry.  With the end of the war, that “investment” was rendered valueless, and that put severe limits on the available local capital for investment.

Another reader writes:

Having relocated to South Carolina over three years ago, I can attest to the currency of Mr. Carden's comments. I have heard several contractors who are not native Southerners indicate that in a bidding process they will invariably lose contracts made to locals and win proposals made to people who have relocated from other areas of the country. (While I am not willing to characterize local work as inferior, my experience here reinforces the adage that you get what you pay for.) In addition, the above behavior reflects a general sense of victimization that is still very much a part of southern cultural attitudes. If there is anyone who believes the Civil War ended in April of 1865, rest assured the conflict is both alive and well.

The former president makes an announcement:

Larison sharpens his point:

What bothers me about the snap judgments about Pakistan’s complicity (as opposed to complicity on the part of a relative few people within Pakistani intelligence) is that they are not informed by any clear evidence of complicity apart from the location of the compound. There is an assumption that complicity simply must be the explanation for why bin Laden was where he was, and there is an added assumption that this implicates a large part of the Pakistani establishment. This is jumping to conclusions at its worst. If there were elements within the ISI that sheltered bin Laden, as I assume there were, that doesn’t prove that they were acting with the knowledge or approval of all Pakistani authorities.