Month: November 2011

Stamps are among them:

Among [Henry] Schuler’s favorite stamps are a pair depicting the 1803 attack of the USS Philadelphia by Barbary pirates, in Tripoli harbor. Illustrations of the burning ship are flanked on either side by images of American airplanes preparing to bomb Tripoli in 1986, and the caption reads, FROM THE “PHILADELPHIA” TO F111 AIRCRAFT. "Qaddafi could draw a direct parallel between that historic event and the American bombing of Tripoli," Schuler said. He described the illustrations as "Armageddon-like": "Some of the pirates have cutlasses in between their teeth. Who puts that on a stamp?"

Slashdot flags a local news segment out of Houston:

The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office in Conroe paid $300,000 in federal homeland security grant money [for the] ShadowHawk unmanned helicopter. … Michael Buscher, chief executive officer of manufacturer Vanguard Defense Industries, said this is the first local law enforcement agency to buy one of his units. He said they are designed to carry weapons for local law enforcement. "The aircraft has the capability to have a number of different systems on board. Mostly, for law enforcement, we focus on what we call less lethal systems," he said, including Tazers that can send a jolt to a criminal on the ground or a gun that fires bean bags known as a "stun baton."

A reader writes:

That post regarding Bridgeport is incredibly misleading and the data are skewed. For example, Darien is nowhere near Bridgeport. Darien would be considered to be in the area of Stamford, but Stamford doesn't work if you're trying to gin up a Zimbabwe metaphor. 

Another writes:

I'm neither a fan nor a defender of Fairfield County, but you could carve out a geographical area around any center of affluence and make the same case.

I'm sure you'll get this from other readers, but calling Bridgeport America's most unequal city will be met with bewilderment by anyone familiar with the place.  Bridgeport is uniformly depressed and poor, I would guess one of the most equal, in a totally negative way, places in the country.  I grew up in Fairfield County and in 20 years never went to Bridgeport, so all of my neighbors and I would be very surprised that we were considered Bridgeport residents.  As a guess I'd say that Bridgeport constitutes about 10-15% of the county's population, and the county isn't even named after the place.  Calling Fairfield County the most unequal county in America would make a hell of a lot more sense.

Another:

I was born and raised in Fairfield County (Greenwich) and Connecticut has been heading this way for as long as I can remember. When I was growing up, we were warned to be careful when we crossed the town line into Stamford. My husband and I lived in Trumbull (the town directly north of Bridgeport) for a few years with our children and people would caution you about going to Bridgeport. Now we live in Guilford (just up the shoreline in New Haven County) and people are shocked that we send our teenage sons to a magnet high school in New Haven.

When the residents of one town fear the residents of another because of race and income disparity, we all suffer. Unfortunately the ones that are most in need suffer the most.

Update from a reader:

I've got to respond to this: "That post regarding Bridgeport is incredibly misleading and the data are skewed. For example, Darien is nowhere near Bridgeport. Darien would be considered to be in the area of Stamford, but Stamford doesn't work if you're trying to gin up a Zimbabwe metaphor."

1)  It's Connecticut.  Everything is near everything.  Duh.  There are plenty of people in Darien who commute to Bridgeport for work.  Or, better yet, commute PAST Bridgeport to Stamford or even the city.

2)  The author isn't "ginning up" a Zimbabwe metaphor.  This is just how the Bridgeport MSA is defined:  all of Fairfield County.  He isn't cherry-picking cities, he's taking an objective definition provided by an outside authority.  If there's a problem with the composition of the MSA, take it up with the Census Bureau who defines these things.

Vali Nasr thinks the regime's bid for regional power is backfiring:

Iran expects greater influence in Iraq and Afghanistan once U.S. troops leave, but with that will come greater burdens. Once absent, America can no longer be the focus of opposition in both places. Instead, Iran may replace the U.S. as the target of popular anger, blamed for the failure of government to meet people’s needs. Iran may prove no more able to pacify Iraq and Afghanistan than the U.S. has been. Iran is adept at causing security headaches in the region but is untested when it comes to resolving them.

Haleh Esfandiari looks to a new graphic novel (which began as a blog) to explain the government's isolation from its own people.

The Economist checks in on mind-reading research. Another article weighs the pros and cons. Among the more positive implications:

Such a development would allow both the fit and the disabled to operate machines merely by choosing what they want those machines to do. It would permit the profoundly handicapped—those paralysed by conditions such as motor-neuron disease and cerebral palsy—to communicate more easily than is now possible even with the text-based speech engines used by the likes of Stephen Hawking. It might unlock the mental prisons of people apparently in comas, who nevertheless show some signs of neural activity. For the able-bodied, it could allow workers to dictate documents silently to computers simply by thinking about what they want to say. The most profound implication, however, is that it would abolish the ability to lie.

Stuart Schoffmann gives a primer on the relationship between religion, society, and state:

[S]top any bareheaded Jew on a Tel Aviv beach and ask them if there’s religious coercion in their country, and the knee-jerk response will be yes.

For many Israelis, "religious coercion" doesn’t mean forced synagogue attendance, but the evasion of military duty by tens of thousands of young ultra-Orthodox men; the harassment of Reform rabbis and citizens who drive on Shabbat; the overflowing of public money to yeshivas and to ultra-Orthodox families that don’t pay taxes; the premature ending of Daylight Savings Time before the High Holidays to facilitate penitential ritual; and the hurling of dirty diapers at women wearing prayer shawls at the Western Wall, a spiritual magnet for all Jews that has been turned, with the complicity of governmental authorities, into an ultra-Orthodox synagogue. As for "theocratic tendencies," we have the hegemony of the ultra-Orthodox-dominated, state-funded Chief Rabbinate over marriage, divorce, and conversion, protected by the ultra-Orthodox parliamentarians in the Knesset.

(Photo: A Jewish man wrapped with prayer shawl attends the Annual Cohanim prayer, or Priest's blessing, for the Pesach [Passover] holiday, on April 21, 2011. at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's old city. Thousands of Jews make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem during Pesach, which commemorates the Israelites' exodus from Egypt some 3,500 years ago. By Uriel Sinai/Getty Images.)

Derek Thompson writes:

Rick Perry's tax plan would raise taxes on most households, cut taxes on millionaires by hundreds of thousands of dollars, and reduce government revenue by about $600 billion in 2015, according to new analysis from the Tax Policy Center.  … He and Herman Cain have both proposed flat-ish taxes that exempt investment income from taxation. The inevitable result of this decision is a huge tax break for the wealthy. If you think they've earned it, you're welcome to make the argument. Just know that a $500,000 tax cut for millionaires isn't a bug of Perry or Cain's tax plan. It is the plan.

Thompson's "very, very long graph" after the jump:

Amanda Marcotte believes so:

[O]ne thing I've noticed that turns an already sad situation into open warfare is when one person feels like the other person simply doesn't have the right to leave. While this can go both ways, since men are traditionally socialized to think of marriage as a claiming of a woman—you even get to name her after yourself!—men have, in the past, been more likely to refuse to accept the divorce. This escalates hostilities. But the men of my generation didn't get nearly the intense social training to believe your wife belongs to you, and so are more likely to get to the acceptance level of the divorce process faster if their wives leave them.

Today on the Dish, the Greek prime minister called for a voter referendum on the EU bailout, and pandemonium ensued. Sexual harassment allegations are currently a net win for Herman Cain, readers weighed in on the claims, and we anticipated his wife's meeting with the press. Everything is going according to Cain's business plan, he backed a foreign government over his own, and a Republican operative understood the implications of the fringe frontrunner's hold on the party. George Will engaged in some pretty egregious credentializing pre-Romney take-down, Michael Gerson made an uncomfortable case for the flip-flopper, Huntsman's campaign charged, and Rick Perry is not a "talker." In our video feature, Andrew shared his reading list.

The Qatari leadership preempted domestic demands for democratic reform, Spencer Ackerman admitted to being "too blinded with fears of Iraq 2.0" when in came to Libya, and if Tunisia is a dolphin in transition, Egypt is a whale.

The occupiers are hippies for the era of Eisenhower, a reader commemorated "America, the Beautiful," and Jonathan Bernstein cheered 17-year-old suffragists. Military service makes great presidents, daylight drives consumption, and potatoes elevated living standards. Bridgeport is more unequal than Zimbabwe, humanity needs borders, and readers pointed out that the drug czar is legally required to oppose any effort to legalize marijuana. "The Clinton Magic" works, Niall Ferguson fetishized the West, and cohort replacement affects policies and practices. The new Lorax movie is a disgrace, reality TV stars cheapened marriage (while profiting from it), and for many women marriage is still very much an expectation and a goal.

Word cloud of the day here, hathos alert here, stoned Siri here, and home news here. FOTD here, MHB here, VFYW here, and VFYW contest winner #74 here. 

— M.A.

(Photo: Greek and foreign media wait outside the Greek parliament in Athens during a cabinet meeting on November 1, 2011. Greece's government appeared headed for meltdown ahead of a confidence vote after Prime Minister George Papandreou called a referendum on the country's EU debt deal. By Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images.)

That's what Ryan Lizza is calling Herman Cain:

In previous elections, these fringe candidates have never come close to becoming serious contenders. They run to push the ideological debate further to the right or left and to make a name for themselves in the process. If they are lucky, they end up with some notoriety, a new national fundraising base, and perhaps a show on cable TV. These types of fringe candidates don’t truly prepare for the absurdities and difficulties of a Presidential campaign because in their heart of hearts they never believed they would make it very far.

Herman Cain has made it, and the result is akin to a dog catching a car.