Month: August 2011

The middle class is getting angrier:

"Why are there so many kids who have no ambition but to be horrible, criminal people that don't want to do anything other than cause misery for others? Their only aspiration in life is to be like someone in a rap video or to win the Lottery. All they want is a quick fix and that's fuelled by the media and by advertising.

And then there's all the good people out there who work hard and break our backs and do our best, and stay within the boundaries of what is right. I'm attempting to start my own small business but that's going to be even harder in this area now. I don't blame the police for not reacting fast enough. There are just thousands of scumbag criminals out there and not enough police," – Jon Davis, 32, an outraged resident of Croydon, South London.

Random gang violence seems to have calmed in London, but broken out in the North:

A police station in Nottingham was firebombed late on Tuesday by a group of up to 40 men, police said, while there was looting in Manchester and there were tense scenes in Salford. Canning Circus police station in Nottingham was attacked by the group but no injuries were reported, Nottinghamshire police said just after 10pm.

Many immigrant families are livid at the violence and fighting back hard. This is a great detail:

"It was between about nine and 10 at night," said Yilmaz Karagoz, sitting in his coffee shop next to a jeweller's shop that has been shuttered since Sunday when the rioting began and a pharmacy that closed a day after.

"There were a lot of them. We came out of our shops but the police asked us to do nothing. But the police did not do anything so as more came we chased them off ourselves." The staff from a local kebab restaurant ran at the attackers, doner knives in their hands. "I don't think they will be coming back," Karagoz said…

In his coffee shop in Stoke Newington, [he] tried to explain another feature of these riots – why Turkish and Kurdish youths had generally not joined the looting. "We have businesses and work hard for what we have. As parents we want our children to work, earn money and be able to buy what they want, not steal it. Our young people know we would be ashamed of them if they were doing this."

And this is a great image.

(Headline from tomorrow morning's Daily Telegraph.)

Kevin Drum asks for ideas:

We can all name things we think [Obama] should have done in the past. But that's water under the bridge. Right now, the economy is what it is, and the Republicans who control the House flatly won't allow Obama to do anything about it. It hardly matters why. Maybe it's because of legitimate ideological differences. Maybe it's because it's not in their interest for the economy to get better before next November. Maybe they're just nuts. Regardless, they aren't going to allow any action that might improve the economy in the short term. End of story.

So: what's the answer?

Jared Bernstein recommends the FAST legislation and Yglesias likes using Fannie and Freddie. Drum responds to both here. My more conservative advice here.

Cambria, California, 11.30 am

A reader writes:

Ms. Grose writes, "I doubt Newsweek would portray a male candidate with such a lunatic expression on his face." How quickly we forget the relentless coverage of Howard Dean's "YEEEAAAH!" moment.

Another writes:

As soon as I saw the reactions to the Newsweek cover it brought to mind a New York Times Magazine cover of Mark Warner in 2006. The story was by Matt Bai but the cover itself brought controversy because Warner was captured in an unflattering light. Is that sexism?

NOW just jumped what was left of its shark.

Yasmine El Rashidi is covering the Mubarak trial:

What’s happening in Egypt these days is much more complex than the now-familiar narrative about Islamists versus revolutionaries, pro-democracy versus pro-Mubarak, protesters versus SCAF. By the time the military did eventually disperse the remaining Tahrir occupants on August 1, even the square itself was divided: the English-speaking “activists” had packed up the day before and returned to the luxury of their homes and to Western-style coffee shops. Many young working class men remained in the square, as did families of martyrs. The upper-middle-class activists tried to convince them to pack up and go, to re-open the square. “Why should we,” several of them told me much later that night as we walked through Tahrir. “We have nothing to go home to.” …

Outside the trial this week, that sense of fragmentation was clear again in the very different responses to Mubarak’s arrival in the courtroom.

At 9:59 AM, following his two sons, an ashen looking ex-president was wheeled into the small barred dock on an ambulance stretcher. Inside the courtroom and outside the academy, people gasped. The scuffles and rock-throwing by anti-Mubarak crowds outside the academy—who tried to pelt the massive screen in protest against what they called “media lies” and pro-Mubarak banners beneath it—suddenly subsided. Shock washed over people’s faces. A few shed tears. A man kneeled down to the hot tarmac floor and kissed it, thanking God.

(Photo from outside Mubarak's trial by Flickr user Maggie Osama)

Ryan Lizza keeps an eye on Michele:

[Bachmann's recommended Historian] J Steven Wilkins has combined a Christian conservatism with neo-confederate views and developed what is known as the theological war thesis. This is an idea that says the best way to understand the Civil War is to see it in religious terms, and [that] the South was an Orthodox Christian nation attacked by the godless North and that what was really lost after the Civil War was one of the pinnacles of Christian society. This insane view of the Civil War has been successfully injected into some of the Christian home-schooling movement curriculums with the help of [Wilkins]. My guess is this is how [Bachmann] encountered the guy at some point. … She recommended this book on her website for a number of years. It is an objectively pro-slavery book and one of the most startling things I learned about her in this piece.

As reckless, fanatical, self-absorbed and prepared to upend the global economy in order to defend ideological absolutes. Hence the unfavorable ratings and the Republicans with a negative 22 percent. They were where the Dems now are only last November.

They only have 33 percent national favorable ratings, which means Independents have all but abandoned the brand. That 33 percent is statistically indistinguishable from the Tea Party, because most people recognize there is no difference between the two. The GOP hasn't been this unpopular since the CNN polls started measuring these things in 1992. They are now regarded less favorably than they were when Obama was elected! 66 percent of non-whites view the GOP unfavorably, alongside 64 percent of Independents. 57 percent of Independents want their own congressman to be thrown out at the next election.

The Tea Party's unfavorables, meanwhile, have doubled in the last eight months. I think it's perfectly possible we'll have a Democratic House by 2013 and a Republican Senate. That's a much saner combo for Obama to handle in a second term, if he gets one.

But let me note once again Obama's core political strength: his uncanny ability to get his opponents to destroy themselves.

Apparently now, it is just another legitimate maneuver to oppose a president you don't like or support. I'm afraid it's hard to come up with any real reason for this gathering extremism – first impeaching a president for perjury in a civil suit, and a decade later using the threat of national default as leverage – except a presumption that only a Southern Republican can be a legitimate president, as beautifully expressed here.

The truth about these alleged constitutionalists is that they are defined by their lack of any restraint.

Tahiti 80 provides a visual playground:

"I'm married just like any other married person in this country. At this point, the government can come in and take my husband and deport him. It's infuriating. It's upsetting. I have no power, no right to keep my husband in this country. I love this country, I live here, I pay taxes and I have no right to share my home with the person I married," – Bradford Wells, a U.S. citizen, legally married in America for seven years, committed to his Australian husband who has severe health problems, for nineteen years.

His husband has been ordered to leave the US by August 25, which must make the pro-family Republican party very, very happy.