Month: September 2011

by Zack Beauchamp

Paul Berman reevalutes his views on the issue since the publication of his influential reaction piece, "Terror and Liberalism:"

The anniversary of September 11 reminds me that, before I come up with a gloomy word to conclude my sentence, it might be useful to recall the Middle Eastern landscape of ten years ago. It was not a spectacle of hope. The whole region seemed to be veering in terrorist directions, with battles almost everywhere going on between Islamists of different stripes and mukhabarat regimes, likewise of different stripes, ranging from the bad to the ghastly. And ten years later? Dismal still, in a kaleidoscopically different pattern. Anyone can think of doomsday possibilities—an Iranian order to Hamas and Hezbollah to launch a regional war, and so on. Still, two new elements, which you could not have found ten years ago, figure nowadays on the landscape.

Here and there around the region you can see democratic institutions, shaky as a leaf—threatened by terrorists and Islamist militias in Iraq, trampled underfoot by an Islamist militia in Lebanon, still merely a project for the future in Tunisia, and feebler yet in Egypt, given that, if the Egyptian elections go ahead, they will probably bring the wrong people to power. Democratic institutions nonetheless amount to a new element. And something else: the ineradicable fact that liberals, relatively isolated and weak as they are, have made a mass appearance on the public stage, and the liberals left a good impression on the rest of society, and they even demonstrated the ability, for a moment, to shape events, and their day may not be over yet.

Joseph Stiglitz tallies the cost of the attacks. Joseph Nye parses lessons about international politics from the American response.

by Maisie Allison

Larison dismantles Romney's approach to foreign policy, which seems to be based on the notion that Obama went on a world "apology tour" after his inauguration:

The “apology tour” is a complete fabrication. If Romney said this as a throwaway applause line once or twice, we could dismiss it as cheap politicking and no one would care, but this criticism has been at the core of Romney’s foreign policy message for the last two years. It is the main conceit of his campaign book, No Apology, whose foreign policy section is painfully bad. Romney has decided for some reason to put an obvious falsehood at the center of the argument why voters should trust him to set U.S. foreign policy.

He anticipates that Romney would bring "overreach and hubris" to the job. Jennifer Rubin is pleased by Romney's boldness. James Joyner calls it "vanilla." More on imperial conservatism here. 

(Photo by John Moore/Getty Images.)

by Zoë Pollock

Cord Jefferson wonders why black immigrants comprise 41 percent of all black students at Ivy League schools, even though they make up less than 1 percent of America's total population. He calls it the Ivy League’s dirty little secret: 

While America’s most elite colleges do in fact make it a point to promote ethnic diversity on their campuses, a lot of them do so by admitting hugely disproportionate numbers of wealthy immigrants and their children rather than black students with deep roots—and troubled histories—in the United States. … While affirmative action started as a system to right the wrongs of slavery and institutional anti-black racism, helping wealthy immigrants who weren’t here for those struggles doesn’t serve any of the program's original intentions.

by Chris Bodenner

Many Christians on blogs and Facebook are upset with the Pentecostal preacher who let her fingers do the talking. From the AT2W blog (via Jenée Desmond-Harris):

When we have ministers like the late Zachery Tims who had a drug habit and who was recently discovered dead in a NYC hotel room; Bishop Eddie Long who allegedly had several affairs with teenage boys and young men; marriages that continue to end in divorce between couples in the ministries, we must address what seems to be the problem within the body of Christ and a lot of it is, rebellion, greed and lust. However, when we look at this Facebook page of Dr. Juanita Bynum II, it seems as though, she is allowing the Devil to misrepresent God’s Kingdom, and maybe this is a mental issue. No one in their right mind would ever think that you can type out speaking in tongues.

Let us read this together, in the book of Acts 2:1-4, it says this:

1 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them (or gave them utterance).

This is why we all have to be led of the spirit and be careful who we follow, because no matter how good one preaches or can make us feel good, demons travel and we cannot allow them to take dominion over the body of Christ.

A Dish reader:

Allow me to share some Scripture from 1 Corinthians 14:26-28 and 33:

What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. If any speak in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn, and let someone interpret. But if there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in church and speak to himself and to God……For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.

Just who exactly was built up by this typing in tongues? No one and certainly not God. Well, except for the "Prophetess" – she was very clearly built up in the eyes of the 470 people who Liked her post. Christ died so Juanita Bynum II can get mad props on Facebook. Bloody hell.

by Patrick Appel

There are major spending cuts and tax increases that will take effect if Congress does nothing. Various pundits, Ezra Klein chief among them, have advocated fixing our deficit by simply letting current law run its course. Howard Gleckman throws some awful chilly water on the idea:

Compared to this year, spending in 2013 would effectively be frozen, while taxes are increased by $750 billion. 

CBO projects such a sharp dose of austerity would slash economic growth by between 1.5 and 3.5 percentage points in 2013. With most economists projecting a 2013 expansion of about 3.5, this could cut growth by between one-third and, well, 100 percent. Keep in mind that with interest rates at close to zero, the Federal Reserve couldn’t do much to help.  And, btw, while CBO doesn’t try to estimate what a new recession would mean for the deficit, it wouldn’t be pretty. 

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

This is only a half-formed idea, but as I watched Santorum engage the Penn State students, I couldn't help but wonder if candidate Santorum is really bad for Catholics. He seems to be suggesting that he's been persecuted for his dogmatic following of the Church's teachings. Nevermind that a thinking person and someone trying to be the leader of the free world should be able to construct personal values that differ from a wider belief system and still participate in that belief system, but isn't he just reinforcing the problem that American voters have always had with Catholic candidates?

As something of a lapsed Catholic myself, many of my issues with the Church stem from issues with Church policy and conduct, not from differences of theology. At a time when the Church is lacking moral authority from years of child abuse and scandal, a public figure pledging blind allegiance to that same moral authority would seem to be reinforcing the notion that Catholics are blind followers of Vatican creed.

In other words, Rick is all but admitting that he would take calls from the Pope in the Oval Office. How far we've come since 1960. But ironic how our tolerance for vocally-Catholic candidates has given Santorum cover to spread intolerance toward gays.

In other Santorum news, Savage encourages another snicker-inducing meme.

Update: A reader marvels at the above video:

Did it really used to be the case that a presidential candidate could *improve* his standing among southern Protestants by proclaiming "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute" and that the presidency must not "be humbled my making it the instrument of any religious group", where a president's "views on religion are his own private affair"?

by Zoë Pollock

Dan Ariely finds the field of financial advice lacking. It's mostly our own fault, but Ariely wishes advisors would ask better questions:

In one study, we asked people the same question that financial advisors ask: How much of your final salary will you need in retirement? The common answer was 75 percent. But when we asked how they came up with this figure, the most common refrain turned out to be that that’s what they thought they should answer. And when we probed further and asked where they got this advice, we found that most people heard this from the financial industry. …

In our study, we then took a different approach and instead asked people: How do you want to live in retirement? Where do you want to live? What activities you want to engage in? And similar questions geared to assess the quality of life that people expected in retirement. We then took these answers and itemized them, pricing out their retirement based on the things that people said they’d want to do and have in their retirement. Using these calculations, we found that these people (who told us that they will need 75% of their salary) would actually need 135 percent of their final income to live in the way that they want to in retirement

  

by Patrick Appel

Using census data, Tom Lawler breaks down homeownership by age:

Some readers might be surprised at the sizable declines in the homeownership rates for younger householders from 1980 to 1990 – after all, they’ve been deluged with charts showing “aggregate” US homeownership rates over the last several years, but with little or no discussion of homeownership rates by age group. There was actually a fair amount written about the drop in younger householder homeownership rates from 1980 to 1990, with researchers attributing the decline to a number of factors – younger folks marrying later in life, job choices and labor mobility, and several other factors …

Today on the Dish, Santorum got frothy over the American Psychological Association, we recalibrated Romney's position on the Mendoza line, and a pro-Bachmann PAC pulled out the big guns (read: attack ad) for Perry. We collected the best reads on Huntsman's new tax plan, Kornacki chalked Perry's success up to the hubris of the GOP, Zack centered in on their blind Christianism, and Austin Frakt reassured us of what the GOP would have to pull off to undo the preexisting conditions reform. 

Zack engaged Anne-Marie Slaughter and Joshua Foust on R2P in Libya, and battled Alyssa on True Blood and Games of Thrones. We got the skinny on the Keystone XL pipeline, David Rittgers skewered the DOJ's "Fast And Furious" operation, and all the psychoanalysis in the world couldn't save Dick Cheney from moral condemnation. Ethan Hein exposed our ridiculous copyright system, we contemplated racism and flashbulb memories in police lineups, and Wikileaks sprung a leak. We questioned the numbers behind hospital errors in the US and Europe, and community college exams trump the SAT in high stakes. DC pawned off its cannabis growers onto the federal government, and smart grids could lower the number of blackouts, while the US government picked a solar loser.

Despite all the evidence we still don't know how to make ourselves happy, exercise can treat the depressed if they stick with it, and reading blogs help our brains. A reader shared a heartbreaking story about the flooding upstate, others calculated their Visa fees, and the best way to board a plane is fast but confusing. Some people are addicted to soda, dog-people voted for more dogs in public places, and typing in tongues and leisure diving helped us get through a slow news week.

VFYW here, MHB here, and FOTD here.

–Z.P.

by Maisie Allison

Jim Pethokoukis hypes it:

At first glance, this looks like perhaps the most pro-growth, pro-market (and anti-crony capitalist) tax plan put forward by a major U.S. president candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1980. But it is not without political risk. In addition to killing tax breaks for businesses, Huntsman would eliminate the mortgage interest deduction, healthcare exclusion, and the child tax credit among other “tax expenditures. ” We’re talking about a whole herd of sacred cows. 

Mataconis:

This strikes me as the kind of broad-ranging tax reform that we need…Even though it decreases tax rates, it’s likely to increase revenue, both because of the elimination of deductions, and because of the economic activity that a reinvigorated, rationalized tax code is likely to spur.

Mark Hemingway is psyched about the "pro-growth plan". Unimpressed, Ezra Klein notes that Huntsman's "revenue-neutral" proposals adhere to generic Republican orthodoxy:

Huntsman’s plan increases taxes on most Americans in order to pay for very large tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations…It’s also a plan that doesn’t have anything particular to say about a pretty extraordinary moment in the economy: everything in it, save for the repeal of various Obama-related initiatives, could have been in the Republican platform in 2005, or 2001 or 1996. 

Steve Benen calls the plan "ridiculous":

So, Huntsman’s big idea is … more tax cuts.

Jamelle Bouie echoes Benen:

 [T]he chief problem with Huntsman’s proposal is that it leaves the Bush tax cuts intact, and any tax plan that doesn’t raise revenue is one that requires massive cuts to federal spending in order to prevent a debt explosion. To give an idea of what this would mean, the Republican Study Commission budget assumes extension of the Bush tax cuts through the next decade, and in order to keep debt from reaching 100 percent of GDP, it also slashes non-defense discretionary spending by 70 percent by 2021, and introduces hugely regressive “reforms”

Weigel entertains a pipe-dream:

Let's say Huntsman wins the nomination — perhaps, keeping with their patterns, news networks exclude every candidate but him from the debates. This stops being a bold tax plan and starts being tax hikes on poor people.

Benjy Sarlin explains where Huntsman diverges from Bowles-Simpson:

[R]ather than using a portion of the revenue from ending [tax expenditures] to help pay down the deficit as Bowles-Simpson proposed, it would instead use them to eliminate the capital gains tax, which disproportionately benefits the ultra-rich. Per ThinkProgress, estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center indicate that a zero expenditure plan would add up to about $1,890 in higher taxes for middle class families while the richest 0.1% of the population would score an average $486,000 in savings from the capital gains cut.

Ponnuru is also concerned: 

[I]t seems highly likely that the net result would be a higher tax bill for most middle-class parents, also known as Republican voters. Attacking the financial interests of your own side’s voters is praiseworthy only if it is in the service of good policy.