Month: October 2011

E.D. Kain takes issue with Occupy Wall Street's slogan:

I understand this whole We Are the 99% thing, but it still doesn't sit well with me. Most of us really aren't up there in the 90's or even the 70's or 80's. Indeed, the top 25% of American households have 87% of all the wealth in this country. So maybe We are the 75% is more appropriate. But if this is really going to be about regular Americans, working class people, and not just a bunch of dissatisfied college kids with too much time on their hands, it’s going to have to be more like We Are the 25%.

Follow-up here.

Alton Bay, New Hampshire, 1.45 pm

A new UN report (pdf) finds that torture is rampant in Afghanistan's detention facilities:

UNAMA’s detention observation found compelling evidence that 125 detainees (46 percent) of the 273 detainees interviewed who had been in NDS detention experienced interrogation techniques at the hands of NDS officials that constituted torture, and that torture is practiced systematically in a number of NDS detention facilities throughout Afghanistan. Nearly all detainees tortured by NDS officials reported the abuse took place during interrogations and was aimed at obtaining a confession or information. In almost every case, NDS officials stopped the use of torture once detainees confessed to the crime of which they were accused or provided the requested information. UNAMA also found that children under the age of 18 years experienced torture by NDS officials.

Chris Rogers wants action now:

With more and more responsibility for security being shifted to Afghans, the strategic risk and political liability posed by abusive detention practices will only grow. Right now the US and other ISAF nations have the most leverage to shape the Afghan justice system and leave behind institutions, laws, and mechanisms that uphold the rule of law and protect Afghans from torture. As the war in Afghanistan marks its tenth anniversary, time is not on the side of either ISAF or the Afghan government. The UN report marks a perhaps singular opportunity to marshal momentum behind detention reforms that will be long-lasting and effective at protecting the most basic of human rights.

E.D. Kain thinks it has a shelf-life:

There's a reason fantasy wasn't mainstream before. It's a genre that appeals to people who play D&D and get their kicks reading about elves with names like Tanis Half-Elven and Galadriel. Unless publishers can keep finding the next big crossover, fantasy may once again return to its less mainstream, and considerably less profitable, roots. People can only take in so many teenage vampire romances and wizarding schools. It's possible that the next Harry Potter is just around the corner, of course, but it seems like no matter how many "Is Such-and-Such the Next Harry Potter?" articles I read, the books never quite gain enough momentum to go mainstream. Books like Lev Grossman's The Magicians gain wide critical acclaim, but then run into the immovable object that is the hardcore fantasy fan base.

Erick Erickson is parading around the fact that only 53% of Americans pay income taxes. The reason many taxpayers wrongly think they are a part of this group:

[M]ost people think of the taxes that you pay when you "do your taxes" in April as being your income taxes. It is, in fact, a consolidated income tax and payroll tax. Thanks to some temporary tax cuts implemented during the recession, a very large share of American workers currently have only payroll tax liability rather than income tax liability. So through sleight of hand, you can convince many more than 53 percent of the people that they are part of the put-upon "53 percent" forced to bear the burden of a nation of slackers. It’s clever. But don’t fall for it, and don’t let your friends and family fall for it either.

Chait chips in two cents.

A blind cat meets a hair dryer:

From the video's caption:

This is our five month old cat Oskar. He was born with no formed eyeballs and hence he cannot see at all! His blindness does not hold him back at all — he can do pretty much everything that our "normal" cat Klaus can do.

Friedersdorf asks:

Over the next three days, Perry has promised to explain how, if elected, he would quickly 1) put 1.2 million Americans to work; 2) achieve energy independence! A policy proposal that accomplished all that would be quite a trick. But we're in for something even more amazing. Unlike other politicians, who just don't get it, Perry isn't going to focus on the policy we should implement, he's just going to get Americans working again — the energy independence he's going to achieve, in the course of putting millions to work, won't require an act of Congress, just a president who wants it badly enough.

It would be this:

Douthat believes Democrats would have been just as obstinate as Republicans have been: 

[I]n a McCain presidency Democrats would have faced the same political incentives Republicans face now — where it’s easier to blame a terrible economy on the president than to find ways to cooperate with him — with two added reasons to fight rather than to deal: First, they could have easily pinned the whole of the economic crisis on the G.O.P. (“the Bush-McCain Depression,” etc.), and second, they would have had a potentially unbeatable Hillary Clinton rather than a suspect Mitt Romney waiting in the wings for 2012.

Does Ross believe McCain would have gotten zero Democratic votes for his first stimulus? And zero Democratic votes for a cap-and-trade bill? Nah. Does he think they would have defunded McCain's closing of Gitmo, as he wanted to? Please. Ross's excuses for his pathetic reptile of a party are getting thinner and thinner. I'm no fan of the Dems. But the GOP is just way further out there on intransigence and ideological rigidity.

Courtesy of James Sinclair:

Yeah, I'm oversimplifying, but only a little. The greatest threat to our economy is neither corporations nor the government. The greatest threat to our economy is both of them working together. There are currently two sizable coalitions of angry citizens that are almost on the same page about that, and they're too busy insulting each other to notice.

(Hat tip: Jim Harper)