Month: June 2011

A reader writes:

You wrote:

"So I've shifted my own position to what might be called the left, but which, from a fiscal perspective, is actually on the right"

With that one sentence you lay bare what most bugs me about today's politics. Back in the old days I would consider myself a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. Today, well, I'm still big on civil liberties, a social liberal, but what is a fiscal conservative?  Eisenhower refused to lower taxes (top marginal tax rate of 91%) if it would add to the deficit.  Now THAT was a fiscal conservative.

These days a "fiscal conservative" is someone who wants to cure the world's ills using tax cuts for millionaires.  Look at the rationale Bush used to sell us the tax cuts and compare it to the reasons Republicans insist on keeping the Bush tax cuts. What do you see?  The only coherent policy I can detect is, "Ugh, tax cuts good." 

Over several decades Republicans have turned the world "liberal" into an insult. Yet Republicans still call themselves conservatives and nobody points out that if they are conservatives, then the word "conservative" does not mean what it used to mean. Please talk about this more.  As a former "conservative" I consider the subject highly important.

I actually wrote a book about it. But I'll keep it front and center.

Tom Ricks ventures a guess:

U.S. forces actually will leave. The U.S. government then will wait for an invitation to come back. As former Army chief of staff George Casey once put it, "It's almost, we have to leave to get invited back." But what if it the invite doesn't come, or, what if it does, and the U.S. Congress balks? Keep in mind that 2012 is an election year for both the House of Representatives and the president. If we fall back into a recession, continued war spending is going to become extremely unpopular.

A reader writes:

Balko stated, "It does mean that brain cancer incidence has plummeted just as cell phone use has taken off." No way would such a new device have a measurable effect yet. In a logical and quotable interview with a neurosurgeon [seen above], he explains how it's like expecting lung cancer in teenage smokers when actually it's not until they become adults and elderly that they suffer and die from it. The surgeon also has sound advice on how to keep our phone away from your brain.

Jon Crowell fisks Balko a bit. Another writes:

I think you should have done a bit more digging on that post. I read the fuller piece of news, and this is how the WHO classifications work:

It’s worth noting that the WHO's cancer researchers could have given mobile phones one of five scientific labels: carcinogenic, probably carcinogenic, possibly carcinogenic, not classifiable, or not carcinogenic.

So, the WHO gave it the second lowest-grade, basically saying there isn't enough information for a definitive statement but there isn't good evidence to support a link between cell phones and cancer. Being possible is very different from being probable.

Also, if you're that worried, using bluetooth while the phone sits in your pocket would be worse (groin cancer?); at least your brain is protected by your skull!

Aaron Carroll goes through the evidence:

This is more akin to saying that there could be some risk, and that more research is needed. Putting cellphones in this category means that they now join picked vegetables and coffee as “possibly carcinogenic.” So I wouldn’t panic yet.

Debra J. Dickerson previews Django Unchained, where an escaped slave, played by Will Smith, seeks to free his wife and exact revenge on his former masters. She takes issue with the easily demonized master:

Slavery wasn't evil because some masters were. Slavery was evil because, however humane its conditions, it is a crime against humanity. Making the wife's owner a beast … it worries me. Among all the other things slavery was, it was absurd and it was cruel in ways that could transcend whips and chains.

Alyssa Rosenberg echoes her sentiment:

In a sense, movies that turn slaveholding into a cartoon are, in their own way, as unproductive as movies where the intervention of a kindly white person makes everyone around them realize the good intentions they just didn’t know they had: the former allows audiences to narrow the definition of prejudice so they can feel it’s gone, while the latter at least acknowledges that maybe it’s still there. It’s harder to yank up the roots of institutions than to take a match to the newsprint comic villains are printed on.

Is it too outrageous to ask why this little girl is not in school, rather than acting as a media bouncer for her mother on a publicity/campaign tour? Update: because school in Alaska is now out for the summer. My bad.

Frum isolates it:

[Non-wealthy Republicans] feel victimized, embittered, deeply mistrustful of every established institution except the military. And they are hungry for a candidate who pungently expresses their victimhood, bitterness and mistrust: Donald Trump? Herman Cain? Michele Bachmann? But of course, nobody does it better than the candidate who has made victimhood her core message: Sarah Palin.

Joshua Kaufman's laptop was stolen, and he documented the guy who had it with the app, Hidden, on thisguyhasmymacbook.tumblr.com. The caption for this photo:

I really don’t want to know what this guy is doing with my MacBook.

The suspected thief was arrested last night.

A profile in, well, isolation.

E.D. Kain focuses on another section of this report:

[T]he report actually has a lot more to say about attracting new teachers into the profession. It talks about the problems with current compensation models which tilt overall teacher compensation toward retirement benefits such as pensions…. [W]hile the report does stress the importance of teacher education, I think a stronger point is made for higher initial salaries for teachers entering the field.

George Friedman argues that Israel's main issue isn't its borders "but its dependence on outside powers for its national security":

Any country that creates a national security policy based on the willingness of another country to come to its assistance has a fundamental flaw that will, at some point, be mortal. The precise borders should be those that a) can be defended and b) do not create barriers to aid when that aid is most needed. In 1973, U.S. President Richard Nixon withheld resupply for some days, pressing Israel to the edge. U.S. interests were not those of Israel. This is the mortal danger to Israel — a national security requirement that outstrips its ability to underwrite it.

Hence, of course, the necessity for a super-powerful lobby in the outside power to act as a guarantor. But what if the guarantor has to pick between a democratic Egypt and an Israel careening toward apartheid? That was once a fantasy. It may not be for much longer. Hence the increasing hope/prediction among some on the far right that Egypt will become an Islamist state. That would keep things simpler, wouldn't it?