Month: June 2011

Her version of Paul Revere’s ride:

He who warned, uh, the…the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringin’ those bells and um by makin’ sure that as he’s ridin’ his horse through town to send those warnin’ shots and bells that uh we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free…and we were gonna be armed.

CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin trying to keep a straight face is just too classic.

Chris Blattman retitles a paper on adolescent peer pressure, “Everything I know about peer effects I learned from the Breakfast Club”:

The likelihood that one friend initiates intercourse within a year of the baseline interview increases by 4 percentage points (on a base of 14%) if the other also initiates intercourse, holding constant family and individual factors. Similar effects are also present for smoking, marijuana use, and truancy. We find larger peer effects for females and for pairs that are more likely to remain best friends after a year.

Bradford Plumer asks:

In case that graph's too tiny, America's way over there on the far left, getting slightly less than 3 percent of its revenue from measures to discourage pollution. The average industrialized country gets about 6 percent. That's mainly due to the fact that many European countries put higher levies on gasoline. Still, compared with the rest of the world, we vastly undertax pollution. And changing this doesn't have to cripple the economy: Congress could always do things in a revenue-neutral manner, swapping in higher taxes on greenhouse gases (say) in exchange for lower payroll taxes.

Jonathan Cohn says no:

Candidates can certainly improve with time. (I recall very distinctly then-candidate Barack Obama flubbing the first presidential forum on health care reform.) But there’s a broader lesson here. As I wrote earlier, Romney’s flaws are pretty much priced into his stock right now. He’s been under close scrutiny ever since the last presidential election. Pawlenty, Huntsman, and the other major contenders are still new at this. Nobody has dug through their pasts. Nobody has cross-examined them about positions. Nobody has seen how they deal with the rigors of a presidential race.

Jonathan Chait counters:

I agree that somebody has to win the nomination. I don’t agree that Romney’s faults are priced into his stock. I think the “stock” frequently takes a too-static view of candidates, overweighting things that can be measured at the moment, like name recognition and money, and under-weighting things that can’t, like how the process of electoral competition will alter the voters’ perception of them.

Jonathan Bernstein moderates.

The Daily What explains:

The heights of the keys on this 3D-printed keyboard represent the frequency of use of each English letter.

Jay Newton-Small seems to believe Palin is running:

Palin says she is not inviting media attention on her family vacation. But she’s driving around a giant bus painted with “One Nation; Sarah Palin” on the side and a banner at the back reading: Join the “Fundamental Restoration of America”. And while the rest of her family is in flip-flops and shorts, she’s dressing in candidate- style clothing: skirts and heels and jackets with tiny American and Israeli flags on her lapel. Not to mention the ready-for-TV makeup.

On most of the stops, Palin hasn’t lingered: she didn’t see the slave quarters or take the cruise at Mount Vernon; she spent only 20 minutes at Fort McHenry, 30 minutes at the National Archives; under an hour at Gettysburg and Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Really, just long enough for a photo op, to answer a couple of questions from reporters and to sign some paraphernalia for supporters. And her staff is leaking to select reporters where and when she’s going next in case they lose the bus. But, really, it’s all coincidence.

Noah Millman puts the bailout in context:

The government simply was not going to let GM go bankrupt after bailing out the banks. Period. This was a political decision. That kind of decision happens all the time, and I don’t feel like very much is implicated by it philosophically.

Each party doubtlessly has its debating points to make about how costly the bailout was (or how much less costly than expected) but they are just that: debating points. There is no great push to socialize American manufacturing generally, nor do I feel that anti-GM-bailout sentiment now will have any material bearing on whether the government acts similarly in the future under similar circumstances – such as an incipient global near-depression. In that sense, I really don’t see that GM “matters” all that much.

Manzi's earlier analysis here.

Adrian Chen goes undercover to find out about the online site Silk Road:

Through a combination of anonymity technology and a sophisticated user-feedback system, Silk Road makes buying and selling illegal drugs as easy as buying used electronics—and seemingly as safe. It's Amazon—if Amazon sold mind-altering chemicals.

… Sellers feel comfortable openly trading hardcore drugs because the real identities of those involved in Silk Road transactions are utterly obscured. If the authorities wanted to ID Silk Road's users with computer forensics, they'd have nowhere to look. TOR masks a user's tracks on the site. The site urges sellers to "creatively disguise" their shipments and vacuum seal any drugs that could be detected through smell. As for transactions, Silk Road doesn't accept credit cards, PayPal , or any other form of payment that can be traced or blocked. The only money good here is Bitcoins. Bitcoins have been called a "crypto-currency," the online equivalent of a brown paper bag of cash.

Today on the Dish, Andrew fisked Romney's speech, and deconstructed some of his untruths. Andrew refused to rule Palin out, Josh Green continued to drink the Kool-Aid, and Michelle Cottle urged more crazy women to run. Larison believed in the fringe, Cain studied for the big test, and Palin got caught in an odd lie about the debt. Andrew stayed (fairly) mum on Weiner's weiner, offered his simple advice, and contemplated what it means for privacy today.

Andrew revisited the ACA's effects on Medicare spending, Britain's healthcare crisis sounded familiar, and Douthat predicted compromise on the deficit would go down easier than one on immigration. The internet tried to solve cutting Medicare, Manzi couldn't calculate the impact of saving GM, and young people needed to save on their own for their retirement. Grand Rapids lip-dubbed, dads picked kids up from school on bikes, but not in this DC heat, and young people don't want cable.

Syria tried to make meager concessions, and Nadia El-Awady felt more feminine without her hijab. Andrew dared the GOP to call the former head of Mossad an anti-Semite for calling for a two state solution, Jews still loved Obama, and a philo-semitism primer here. Quotes for the day here and here and here, VFYW here, MHB here, FOTD here, chart of the day here, dissents of the day here, hathos alert here, and prayer Tina Fey style here.

–Z.P.