An Egyptian protester protects his face and head from tear gas during clashes with riot police along a road which leads to the Interior Ministry, near Tahrir Square, in Cairo on November 23, 2011. Several thousand Egyptians rallied in Tahrir Square demanding an end to military rule. By Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images
Jim Antle offers a short history. His bottom line:
Ultimately, Republicans have no choice. To lose the entitlements argument is to lose that battle over the size of government. More pressingly for the party, it is also to surrender the tax issue, perhaps permanently. Without being able to feasibly keep a commitment to low taxes, the GOP really has nothing to say about the economy to millions of Americans.
The Yemeni dictator appears to have signed his own political death warrant to avoid a literal one:
Despite spontaneous celebrations from protestors, Ginny Hill worries that there's still trouble for Yemen on the horizon:
Even if Yemen's rival elite factions agree to lay down their arms, the lack of trust between politicians in the ruling party and the opposition coalition may also prove impossible to overcome. Yemen's current voter registration lists are out of date, and it seems unlikely that new lists will be compiled within 90 days, in time for [Vice-President Abdrabuh Mansur] Hadi's scheduled election. Significant concessions will be required to appease the southern separatists, as well as Houthi rebels in the north. Last but not least, Yemen's youth protesters – who first took to the streets in February calling for Mr Saleh to stand down – show no signs of leaving their sprawling encampment in Sanaa known as Change Square.
Summer Nasser rounds up skeptical reax from the Yemeni twitterverse. Patrick Brennan tries to tease out implications for the US government's Yemen policy.
Ursula Lindsey profiles them:
Part of the problem is that the powers that be have made it a policy to keep policemen violent, dependent, and corrupt. They are badly paid, badly trained, and threatened with early retirement or a court-martial if they disobey orders, says Mahmoud. The real responsibility lies with the higher-ups in the ministry, he argues, who earn fat salaries and make all the decisions.
Lindsey follows up at the Arabist:
It is the leadership of the security forces that is responsible for cultivating the police force's hostility towards the revolution — policemen are angry (ashamed and afraid too, I think); they feel they have lost the "respect" of society, because they can't imagine a respect that isn't founded on unaccountable power.
A reader writes:
Bella as any kind of feminist!? Oh, spare me! And I say that as a high-school librarian, embedded in every major teen novel enthusiasm out there. I inwardly cringe every time a kid comes in asking for one of the Twilight series and have to almost forcibly stop myself from admonishing: "Forget reading! Why don't you go home and watch a few episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer instead?"
I mean, Bella is a girl so in love with her guy that she wants to die. What kind of message is that?
Not to mention the whole series is a second-rate ripoff of Joss Whedon's series, which was far smarter, far funnier, and a hell of a lot deeper both philosophically and in its understanding and portrayal of teen angst. In fact, there's a classic line from Season 2, when Angel, the vampiric love of Buffy's life, has turned evil and made it his mission to destroy Buffy. In an epic stand off between the two of them, when it looks like she is on her last legs, he taunts, "No weapons, no friends, no hope. Take all that away, and what do you have left?" Buffy pauses, turns, stares him dead in the eye and says, "Me." Then proceeds to kick his ass.
That is a feminist heroine.
Chait chastises pundits who are "scolding President Obama for failing to use his mind-control powers to force Republicans to accept a tax hike":
[I]f Obama openly endorses a bipartisan [debt] plan, he’s killing it. And if he keeps his distance, he’s also killing it. What if he tries to directly negotiate a deficit reduction plan behind closed doors? Well, Obama did that, too, this last summer. Republicans opposed it as well.
San Francisco, California, 11 am
Nate Kreuter cautions would-be PhD students about being over-optimistic about job prospects:
What is so impossible for many graduate students to understand is that everybody in their cohort is just as smart and hardworking as they themselves are. At the graduate level, the smarts and diligence that once set students apart from their undergraduate peers will no longer set them apart, but merely allow them to keep up. It is almost impossible for many beginning graduate students to grasp that having above average intelligence and an unimpeachable work ethic will mean only that they are average graduate students. That's quite a shock to some people.
This chart, showing the unemployment rate by education level, is a necessary counterweight to Kreuter's warning. Erik Loomis is in related territory.
Dave Weigel provides a helpful primer on Six Sigma, a popular two-day business seminar. Jim Manzi explains Gingrich's thinking:
I assume that Gingrich’s real purpose in calling for this is to connect with the huge swath of Republican primary voters who work in or around Fortune 1000 companies. They can hear him saying things that they hear at work every day, but that they never hear politicians mention. This makes Gingrich seem more practical and connected to their world, and less a creature of what they take to be out-of-touch Washington. I’ve informally observed that Gingrich has used something like this technique for many years, probably effectively in terms of the politics.
Will Crouch makes the case:
First, as a banker, you could earn well over £6million. By donating 50% of those earnings, you could pay for several charity workers. So you’d do several times as much good than if you were a charity worker yourself.
Second, if you decide not to be a charity worker, someone else will take your place, and so the benefit you provide would have happened anyway. In contrast, if you take a lucrative career and donate your earnings, your donations provide a benefit which would not have happened anyway.
Third, as a philanthropic banker, you can put your money anywhere. So you can fund only the very best causes. In contrast, as a charity worker, you are much more limited in your choice of where to work. Some causes are thousands of times more cost-effective than others, so this can be a big deal.
The Dish 
