An eye-opening tumblr.
Update from a reader:
Not to ruin the apple fanboy fun, but that site is regularly comparing annual revenue with Apple's valuation. A more honest comparison would be to use Apple's annual revenue ($65.23 billion in 2010) when we're talking about revenue, and valuation when we're talking about accumulated value (as in the comparison with the New York fed). Does anyone really believe Apple is bigger than the drug trade?
Andrew Webster looks at Warco, a new video game that looks like a Medal of Honor-style first-person shooter but arms the player only with a camera:
The game itself — the title of which is actually short for “war correspondent” — follows the story of journalist Jesse DeMarco. Players will experience the process of filming conflicts, going into dangerous situations armed with nothing but a camera. They will then edit the footage into a compelling news story. The scenarios range from intense bursts of action to quieter moments as you discuss the events of the day with fellow journalists in a hotel. Though the main mechanic will be filming the action, Warco is also very much about choice. “It’s also about navigating through a morally gray world and making decisions that have human impact,” he explained. “It’s about finding the story you want to tell, as each of our environments is filled with different story elements you can film and combine in your own ways. It’s both a story telling engine and an action adventure with a new perspective.”
Internationally and in America. Will Wilkinson uses these facts to reinforce his argument against capital punishment:
In the face of such a decisive trend in moral culture, we can say a couple different things. We can say that this is just change and says nothing in particular about what is really right or wrong, good or bad. Or we can say this is evidence of moral progress, that we have actually become better. I prefer the latter interpretation for basically the same reasons most of us see the abolition of slavery and the trend toward greater equality between races and sexes as progress and not mere morally indifferent change. We can talk about the nature of moral progress later. It's tricky. For now, I want you to entertain the possibility that convergence toward the idea that execution is wrong counts as evidence that it is wrong.
Interestingly, while the average commute is 25.1 minutes, there are actually relatively few Americans who have a commute of exactly that length. There are just a lot of Americans with commutes shorter than that, and a bunch with commutes much longer than that. A plurality of workers have a commute in the 15-to-19-minute range.
A reader writes:
Responding to your reader who
months in her bedroom: This is probably TMI, but I've saved the sticks from both of my children in a bedroom drawer. It was my first memento, however gross, of my children's lives. And apparently this is not unusual; EPT has created a product to help women save them, based on a survey showing that "over 41 percent of us save our positive pregnancy tests in a Ziploc baggie."
There is a lot to question about Trig's birth story, but this isn't it.
WhatsYourPrice.com allows rich men to bid on dates with beautiful women. Tracy Clark-Flory reports on the site's recent findings:
Based on a six-month study of dates successfully brokered through the site, they found that "men who want to date women over 10 years younger than themselves have to pay approximately 13% more than the average to close every year of age gap." A man 40 years older than his object of affection "will have to pay approximately 400% (or 4 times) more than a man who is only 10 years older to attract the interest of the same woman," read the site's press release. This may sound like mood-killing data, but it's just the sort of blunt financial-cum-romance advice that is visible these days.
Today on the Dish, Andrew chastised Netanyahu and the Christianist GOP for shutting the door on a two-state solution, and was joined by Clinton in criticizing Perry's theological foreign policy. Andrew drew a distinction between religious faith as practice and as a literal truth, and Alan Dershowitz earned a Malkin award on Israel.
Georgia likely executed an innocent man in a perversion of justice under the law. William Jelani Cobb considered the racial makeup of Troy Davis' supporters, and the web weighed in on whether this case could end the death penalty. Andrew challenged Hitch's opposition to the term endless war, and Eric Cummings reconsidered why the forever war has to be emotionally exhausting. The FBI opened an investigation based on the work of a blog, Michael Yon drove home the constant fear of hidden bombs, we tried to understand how the Republic of Korea has survived, and the Taliban refused to cooperate with Karzai's government.
Andrew live-blogged tonight's GOP debate and watched Perry flail; the full debate reax is here. The GOP lobbied for less financial regulation as the country struggled to get over Wall Street's mistakes, and we debated what qualifies as GOP compassion in regards to the government. Perry's Texas miracle was dominated by jobs for immigrants, his popularity plummeted, and Elizabeth Warren wooed progressives by defending taxation of the rich. Levi and McGinniss raised new questions about Palin's pregnancy, and Andrew still hoped to resolve it empirically. Julian Sanchez united Ron Paul and Ron Dworkin, and Chait assessed how the GOP are tiptoeing around supporting Romney without throwing Perry under the bus in case he gets nominated. Perry couldn't carry New Hampshire, Florida braced to be the decisive state for choosing the nominee, and the GOP tried to change Pennsylvania's electoral system because the party is getting whiter as the country's demographics get more diverse.
Readers absorbed the emotions brought on by the servicemember's confession to his father, but those who serve still aren't accorded the same rights for their spouses or children. Obama surpassed Dubya in terms of deportations and closing pot dispensaries in California increased crime. International poker sites operated outside of US gambling regulations, America's rich benefited from a generous tax rate compared to the rest of the world, and America could have its first trillionaire in 50 years. Ted Haggard was appearing on "Celebrity Wife Swap" with Gary Busey, and readers shared more of their favorite out athletes, including Billie Jean King and Brian Sims.
Map of the day here, VFYW here, MHB here, and FOTD here.
–Z.P.
(Photo: A supporter quietly awaits the execution of Troy Davis at Jackson State Prison on September 21, 2011 in Jackson, Georgia. Davis' time of death was 11:08PM on Wednesday, September 21, 2011. By Jessica McGowan/Getty Images.)
That was a really weird encounter between Perry and Romney on who’s the biggest flip-flopper. I mean, this should be a hanging fast ball for anyone running against Romney. And Perry was clearly prepped with a series of attack lines. But he stumbled over them like you’d woken him up in the middle of the night. Or maybe he was a punch drunk heavyweight at the end of the 14th round. Then Romney comes in — an amazing flip-flopper if there ever was one — and manages to just run circles around Perry. It was almost sad.
Romney did so much better than Perry. So much better. But I still cannot believe these candidates have pulled their punches on Romneycare. He’s getting a free pass on it. But his answers on so many questions, while smoothly delivered, were Democrat like.
I’m finding the questions and debate on health care rather wanting. You may not like the ACA, but at least all of us understand what it’s supposed to do. Remember when it was all about “repeal and replace”? Where’s the “replace”? Why will no one talk about that? The one question posed by a young adult asking if they’d take away his coverage was almost completely dodged. We have record numbers of uninsured, calls to cut Medicaid, and a weakening private insurance market. People with chronic conditions can’t get coverage. Too many can’t afford it even if they can get it. What will the candidates do other than get rid of the current law? How will they answer the fundamental problems of access, cost, and quality?
Maybe style shouldn’t matter so much, but Perry sounds exhausted. A direct quote: “Opportunity is very much the word of the day there, if you will, for finding work and what have you.” And because no one is using time to attack anyone but Perry, Romney keeps skating away.
Cain’s not alone in this (mistaken) belief that the Obama EPA is going to issue fines on dirt. It’s one of the tea party-right’s favorite EPA conspiracy theory. Sadly, it’s not true. Despite much outrage on this subject in Congress, the agency has said repeatedly that it isn’t issuing new rules on dust.
Perry is swinging and missing. He is clearly not comfortable attacking Romney as evidenced by the fact he’s stumbling over accusing Romney “being for something before he was against it.”
The problem for Perry is that despite his stated opposition to the DREAM Act and comprehensive immigration reform, the moral arguments he uses to defend his actions in Texas [with regard to in-state tuition for illegal immigrants] double as justifications for policies he says he opposes. And the GOP primary audience knows it.
DiA:
Perry didn’t take as many blows as he did last time. But he also didn’t shine at all. Romney looked quite slick until the end, when he kept talking about how many flaws he had as a candidate. Cain, Santorum, Johnson and other second-tier candidates had moments of clarity. That’s a long-winded way of saying it was a bit of a muddle, and not enough to change the dynamics of the race.
Perry looked tired and was barely able to finish a two hour debate. He stumbled badly over his attack lines on Romney — almost as if he never practiced them. Not looking at Romney while attacking him was a big mistake. If this was Perry’s chance to convince the GOP establishment he could win the nomination and defeat President Obama, he didn’t come close to sealing the deal.
What is it about the GOP candidates that makes them unable to look at Romney (which Perry had trouble doing in all their confrontations, btw) and say, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between Romneycare and Obamacare, and here’s how they’re similar?
10.57 pm. My take: a horrible night for Perry. Therefore another great night for Romney. Now I want to go somewhere dark and slit my wrists.
10.55 pm. Another whopper from Bachmann: plenty of presidents have had lower approval ratings than Obama. Ronald Reagan for one. But reality really isn't these people's specialty, isn't it? Hunstman panders with a hug for Cain.
10.50 pm. Johnson-Paul! Surely better than Santorum-Gingrich. Great answer from Ron Paul, insisting on the relevance of his candidacy. Perry wants a genetic splicing of Cain and Gingrich, which makes me somewhat nauseated. Romney's answer is easily the best.
10.45 pm. Santorum just called president Obama King George III. The enemy of the American people. And Gary Johnson gets the best line of the night on his neighbor's dog and shovel-ready jobs. What I've noticed about the crowd is their strongest responses come not when a policy is backed or ecplained. It's when someone is attacking Obama or predicting his losing the next election. It's a team sport.
10.40 pm. Some reader reaction:
By the way, that gay soldier looked like an animal. Did you see the pipes on him? He was a pretty strong case for why I don't care a lick for what your sexual orientation is (or, to be honest, much else about you personally) — and, I'd like to see some of the armchair soldiers in that room tell that guy to his face that he is somehow unfit to fight. He is likely too honorable to do so, but he could clearly break 'em like a twig. This is really something. Jesus.
Another:
That quaalude Perry took before debate finally kicked in with that Romney flip flop "jibe".
Another:
A soldier booed at a Republican debate. Must be a first.
10.36 pm. Now we have a commercial for a treatment for gout. Ah, the Florida Republicans.
10.33 pm. Romney is defending the principles of the ACA. He's defending the private sector as the basis for universal insurance! Just like Obamacare. Perry's parry on Romney's flip-flopping was teribly framed. Surely he had time to practise that line. But he seems lost and adrift. Almost too bored or too tired or too lazy. And Romney, rather than simply let Perry wallow in his incoherence, he punces again and destroys him. This will surely be the takehome from this debate: Perry is not ready for prime-time against Obama and he is not doctrinare enough by Tea Party standards (on immigration, say) to be the purist candidate. Romney is cleaning up. And Palin is grinning somewhere.
10.30 pm. Perry effectively defends his support for the HPV vaccine. But it's so weird to hear a man who has signed the death warrants of over 200 people say he will always side with "life." The Catholic church, for one, would differ. Then he crumbles on the appalling lack of health insurance in his own state. An awful answer. A dreadful performance. He surely will sink further after this.
10.27 pm. Finally, an actual real human being with a health problem who benefits from the ACA. Huntsman's policy offer is catastrophic health insurance – but it's not clear that would help the kid at all. The growing number of young people able to get health insurance through their parents' policy could be a real factor in this election. As someone with a pre-existing condition, it matters to me that if I were to lose my job, there is no way I could ever get a health insurance policy without the ACA. That matters.
10.25 pm. And now we have a total invention about the health insurance reform frm Herman Cain. Does he not realize the public option was defeated? Does he not understand that the entire system remains private? Does he not know that someone as rich as he could under any Obamacare procedure be able to buy whatever medical care he wants?
10.18 pm. Santorum claims bizarrely that repealing DADT means permission for sexual activity for gays in the military. This is a lie. The same rules of sexual misconduct apply to gays and straights alike. And a gay servicemember is booed by this foul crowd. Santorum keeps saying "sex is not an issue." But that's the current policy! This has nothing to do with sex, as Santorum surely knows. And again, the crowd reveals itself as hateful – even when it comes to those serving their country in uniform. This is one core reason why I cannot be a Republican. So many are bigots – and no one – no one – stands up against them. They're a bunch of bullies congratulating themselves on rooting out the queers..
10. 16 pm. A fascinating exchange between Santorum and Huntsman on foreign policy. About the best exchange of the evening. And Santorum's unreconstructed neoconservatism is not working with this crowd. Ten years of war is enough. And Santorum's Dolchstoss moment about Obama and the generals was a low point.
10.13 pm. Gary Johnson wants a 43 percent cut in military spending! Wow. And an immediate balanced budget. Can you imagine what would happen if the US government sucked that amount of money out of the economy in twelve months? Jesus.
10.11 pm. A classic base position from Butch: no foreign aid (except, of course, for Israel).
10.09 pm. Perry seems to think that Obama has not engaged Pakistan or India. Really? He went to India and Indonesia to check Chinese influence.
10.05 pm. And all foreign policy is dominated by a country of 8 million people. Watch the panderthon begin! Romney is now disgustingly lying about Obama's alleged "apology" tour. There must be no daylight between what Netanyahu wants and what the US does. None. We are the same country, apparently. And notice too that Romney is all but saying that he would allow Israel to launch a pre-emptive war against Iran. That may well become a defining issue.
The Judeo-Christian war against Islam is what the GOP base wants. For Biblical reasons. They know only war. And the one thing that is totally absent from this discussion – it doesn't even come up – is the settlements on the West Bank.
10 pm. A reader shares his view of Perry, who is struggling badly tonight:
Who does he remind me of? Let's see. A 'yell leader' for Texas A&M and a male cheerleader from Mississippi. Perry is a slightly dumber, but more ruggedly handsome version of Trent Lott.
Another notes:
Clearly, Romney is continuing his Obama made it worse mantra, but interestingly, he is co-opting Obama's middle class message. I want to see how that works for him in the primaries.
And suddenly my DVR switches to South Park. I know, TV, I know. But they pay me to do this.
9.50 pm. Ouch. Romney describes Perry's program for in-state tuition as a $100,000 discount for 16,000 illegal aliens attending Texas state colleges. Perry stands by his decision to back in-state tuition for the children of illegal aliens and gets booed. Santorum puts a bigger boot in – describing "preferential treatment" for illegal immigrant children. It's a brutal pile-on, and Perry is reeling. He doesn't support a fence for every inch of the border – for perfectly sane reasons, but it sure isn't playing well with this crowd.
9. 45 pm. Now it's getting silly. Bachmann wants a fence on "every inch" of the border with Mexico and jabs at Perry for allowing the children of illegal immigrants to get a college education. At least Gingrich favors making legal immigration less onerous and cumbersome. But the reason tourism is off is the police state at US borders.
9.43 pm. Perry attacks the program, "Race To The Top", widely viewed as reformist even by leading conservatives. Wasn't it Murdoch's favorite Obama policy? But anything that can have the name "Obama" attached to it is ipso facto not conservative. Even tax cuts. And tax reform. And Medicare cuts.
9.41 pm. Gingrich has now upped the ante to "very profound" changes in education policy. And we just lost the Department of Education as well as the EPA.
9.39 pm. Oh man. Gingrich is going to announce something profound next week, if he says so himself. And 21st Century!
9.37 pm. Now we're abolishing the EPA. And supporting total Chilean privatization of social security – based on the stock market (which today sank 4 percent).
9.35 pm. I love Huntsman's support for serious tax reform. But Obama supports that too, doesn't he?
9.30 pm. Obama is a European, big-spending liberal, according to Romney. But not a socialist. He's poised and aggressive – and currently outclassing his competition.
9.26 pm. The first Perry-Romney spat … and it seems to me that Perry's answer was confusing and addled. And Romney is actually accusing someone else of switching positions. Perry looks like a grinning bobblehed up there: inarticulate and easily bested by the Massachusetts governor.
9.25 pm. A shout-out to the Tea Party beards above. And to Bachmann's slightly less rigid hair helmet. The crowd looks immense – like a football stadium and kinda rowdy as well.
9.23 pm. 44 percent of Republicans who voted think you're not "rich" if you earn less than a million bucks a year. And now we're getting a commercial opposed to legal immigration. Sigh.
9.22 pm. Gary Johnson loves the veto power, wants to abolish the income tax, and shows why it has been absurd to exclude him from these debates when a loon like Bachmann is allowed in.
9.18 pm. The most popular question is about the tenth amendment. Ron Paul's answer is pitch-perfect: he'd just veto every bill that he believes violates the Tenth Amendment, just as he votes against every single bill that violates that principle. Then a rousing defense of a de facto abolition of the federal government.
9.16 pm. There is a logic to Cain's equal rates for all tax rates; and he rouses the crowd. Romney, I notice, is now blaming the entire recession on Obama.
9.14 pm. Huntsman wants a short-term subsidy for natural gas production. Okay. Then he blames the polarization in this country on the Great Recession. Does he not remember the 2000 election?
9.12 pm. Santorum wants to abolish all public sector unions. There's a whole lot of abolishing going on tonight. And now Gingrich wants to abolish unemployment compensation as well. "People should not get money for doing nothing."
9.09 pm Rick Santorum appears to be gazing into heaven for inspiration.
9.08 pm. Bachmann favors the abolition of all income taxes. Or not. More Manichean blather that could be clipped from a Mark Levin book.
9.06 pm. Romney's proposals sounds extremely familiar as well. Along with a bunch of blather. But confident blather.
9.04 pm. Perry proposes tax cuts and tort reform as a cure for unemployment. Really? That all you got? Haven't we just had a decade of tax cuts?
9.03 pm. "Incent" is a transitive verb?
9.02 pm. Once more unto the breach, dear readers … Megyn Kelly might add some camp value, I suppose. But I may be hoping for too much.
Steve Kornacki is hopeful but not optimistic:
It's tempting to wonder if the Troy Davis story — which has received considerable press attention …. — might serve as a public opinion tipping point. But that potential is balanced against another reality: For all of the systemic flaws that have been revealed in the past decade or so — for all of the innocent people who have been freed after years of incarceration — the basic eye-for-an-eye nature of the death penalty remains compelling for most Americans, a sentiment reinforced by the occasional horrific crime…The reality is that we have seen other cases like Troy Davis' before — Perry may have presided over one of them just a few years ago in Texas — and it will probably take a lot more of them before Americans ever give up on the death penalty for good.
Dahlia Lithwick counters:
Advances in science and the empirical research on erroneous convictions are only going to create more doubt in the future. There is an almost unlimited supply of prosecutorial error and misconduct to draw on, and as it grows so will public uncertainty. And as the new media and social media broaden the debate about the death penalty, the folks who are leery of that uncertainty are ever more likely to be heard. America's conversation over capital punishment has long been weighted toward the interests of finality. But there is a growing space for reason and doubt and scientific certainty. It's hardly a surprise that prosecutors, courts, and clemency boards favor finality over certainty. That—after all—is the product they must show at the end of the day.
But maybe the surprise, and the faint hope, of the massive outcry over the execution of Troy Davis, is that the rest of us have found a way to demand more from a system that has—for too long—only needed to be good enough.
Ari Kohen argues we need better anti-death penalty activism to make real changes. Scott Lemieux explains how the structure of our legal system allows cases like Davis's. Previous coverage here and here. Jason Brennan steps back and makes a pithy argument against the death penalty:
Even if we grant for the sake of argument that some people deserve to die, it does not follow that the state may be authorized to kill them. For a state to have the right to kill criminals, it must make decisions about guilt and hear appeals in a fair, competent, and reliable manner. It must have rules that reliably let the innocent–or those whose guilt is reasonably in doubt–go free. The American criminal justice system fails to meet these standards. Perhaps a government of smart angels should be granted the right to kill. We could debate that. But no state in America deserves any such right.
(Photo: Monica Barrow of California waits for news of the US Supreme Court appeal decision as she waits with other protestors outside the Jackson State Prison for the planned execution of inmate Troy Davis on September 21, 2011 in Jackson, Georgia. The appeal was the last effort for the stay of Davis' execution. He was scheduled for execution at 7pm on Wednesday, September 21, 2011 for the 1989 slaying of off-duty Savannah, Ga., police officer Mark MacPhail. By Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)
The Dish 