Month: March 2012

Kottke is wowed:

I have watched this slow motion video of ballet dancers four times and loved, yes, loved the display of precise power and grace contained therein.

Mike Konczal and Bryce Covert dig into the data on what's causing the drop in public sector employment – a significant drag on the unemployment numbers:

[W]hat’s critical to understand is that the drop-off in employment in state and local government wasn’t spread evenly across states, and this trend had almost nothing to do with Obama or his policies. Nearly all of the job losses took place at the state and local level, and they were most severe in a handful of GOP-controlled states. In other words, erosion of public sector employment isn’t a problem affecting the entire country equally—it’s a problem in particular states, thanks to very particular legislators.

Brian Evans captions:

The U.S. [last year] was the only country in the Western hemisphere or the G8 to kill its prisoners, and was responsible for the fifth most known executions in the world, behind China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. (As an independent country, Texas would have ranked 7th, between North Korea and Somalia, with its 13 executions in 2011.)

Purple represents countries that issued death sentences last year; red represents countries that carried out death sentences. A larger version of the map, which also shows the number of executions per country, here.

(Hat tip: Ari Kohen)

An idea whose time has come?

To the right:

If you define elites as high-income non-Hispanic whites, the elites vote strongly Republican. If you define elites as college-educated high-income whites, they vote moderately Republican.

There is no plausible way based on these data in which elites can be considered a Democratic voting bloc. To create a group of strongly Democratic-leaning elite whites using these graphs, you would need to consider only postgraduates (no simple college grads included, even if they have achieved social and financial success), and you have to go down to the below-$75,000 level of family income, which hardly seems like the American elites to me.

Millennials simply aren't very interested in driving: 

If the Millennials truly become the peripatetic generation, walking to the office, the bus stop, or the corner store, it could mean a longterm dent in car sales. It's doubly problematic if they choose to raise children in the city. Growing up in the 'burbs was part of the reason driving was so central to Baby Boomers' lives. Car keys meant freedom. To city dwellers, they mean struggling to find an empty parking spot. 

"[If the ACA is struck down,] Republicans will need a Plan B. Unfortunately, they wasted the past three years that might have developed one. If the Supreme Court doesn't rescue them from themselves, they'll be heading into this election season arguing, in effect, Our plan is to take away the government-mandated insurance of millions of people under age 65, and replace it with nothing. And we're doing this so as to better protect the government-mandated insurance of people over 65—until we begin to phase out that insurance, too, for everybody now under 55," – David Frum.

Antananarivo, Madagascar, 8.30 am

Josh Barro spells it out: 

Conservatives so often get unfairly pounded on race because, so often, conservatives get fairly pounded on race. And this is the Right’s own fault, because conservatives are not serious about draining the swamp. … My challenge to conservatives who feel they get a bum rap on race is this. Stand up for yourself and your colleagues when you feel that a criticism is unfair. At the same time, criticize other conservatives who say racist things, cynically tolerate racism in the Republican base, or deny the mere existence of racial issues in America today. The conservative movement desperately needs self-policing on racial issues, if it ever hopes to have credibility on them.

Conor Friedersdorf and Elspeth Reeve have more.

Hussein Ibish defends a settlement boycott against charges that it would be counterproductive:

[A] boycott need not seek to have a devastating economic impact on the settlement economy. The settlement project is heavily subsidized and is not conceived of as a moneymaking venture. Rather, it is an ideological program. With the exception of the Jewish settlements in the Golan Heights and a few others in the West Bank, what we have is historical irredentism at work, not entrepreneurship. The boycott is a political and symbolic statement. It should be conceptualized as expressing profound political objections, and a refusal to cooperate, whether or not it can make any real dent in the settlement economy. Moreover, the idea that the economic activities connected with more than 500,000 Israeli settlers are immune from pressure is simply silly. … The boycott led by the Palestinian Authority has reportedly led to the closure of numerous factories in several settlements.

And there's something truly surreal about how many who argue that pressuring the fanatics and subsidized poor on the West Bank can only backfire nonetheless favor crippling sanctions on … the religious fanatics in Tehran. Here's J Street founder, Jeremy Ben-Ami, on the settlement boycott idea:

"…I don't think that it makes any sense to put negative pressure on people whose behavior you hope to change … I think if you begin to do things that say, "We're not really with you, we're against you, we're putting pressure on you," I think that causes people to pull more into a shell and pull back."

And here he is, on Iranian sanctions:

There’s no question that the sanctions ultimately do hurt people. This is also important in putting a real squeeze on the government. The petroleum sector is vital to the economy of the country as a whole. And so this is going to put pressure on the government and its going to put constraints on their economic growth generally. And it’s maybe one more incentive to them hopefully, to abandon this [nuclear] course and to come back to the table and accept what, in our opinion, is a very fair offer related to the fair enrichment.

As Andrew Sprung notes, the full context of the last quote muddies it somewhat. But not much. Once again, the rules that apply everywhere else don't apply to Israel. Because … it's Israel.

(Photo: An Israeli soldier fires tear gas during clashes with Palestinian and foreign protestors in the occupied West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, near Ramallah, on March 23, 2012, following a protest against Palestinian land confiscation to build the Jewish settlement Hallamish nearby. By Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images.)