Gary Sick freaks out about the economic consequences of war with Iran:
One might expect disruptions in oil delivery and loading in Arab ports up and down the Gulf, some because of sabotage but others from cyberattacks on the control systems. Iran would attribute these to “the hand of God,” but the more pragmatic effect would be a very substantial portion of the world’s oil suddenly removed from world supply. If sustained over more than a few weeks, the scramble to replace large volumes of Persian Gulf and Caspian oil would drive up the price of oil, and gasoline, to unprecedented heights. That would constitute a huge tax on the world’s economies, just at the moment when they were showing signs of recovery from the Great Recession.
Relatedly, Brad Plumer wonders how much sanctions intended to slow Iran's oil output will drive up oil prices:
From Iran’s perspective, the biggest calculation to make is whether the drop in exports will hurt more than the benefit the country is experiencing from rising oil prices as tensions flare. A March poll of oil traders, conducted by Reuters, found that Iran could see its oil revenues cut in half, by $50 billion, if exports fall to 1.5 million barrels a day and it has to sell some of its oil at a discount. But that’s assuming that oil averages roughly $115 per barrel through the year — lower than its current price.
Football will not disappear because of the risk of brain injury. Simply put: there's too much money on the line for players and team owners to just hang it up because of concussions. Instead the NFL has been addressing this through rule changes to avoid some of the riskier scenarios. Kickoffs have been altered to limit the number of returns. Rules have been implemented to penalize players for dishing out hard hits to player's heads when they are exposed. Players who receive concussions must be evaluated by third-party independent doctors to clear them to play again after receiving a concussion. These rules make the sport safer if not completely safe.
As a fan of the sport, my feeling is that as long as the players are informed about the risks and the NFL does it's best to mitigate those risks, then I don't have any qualms watching it. Brutality is a side effect of the sport, not the point of it. It's not like boxing, UFC, etc, where the point is to inflict injury and defeat an opponent by physical attrition (sports I do not watch). I've seen games filled with injuries and I've seen games where everybody was fine save a few bruises.
Another disagrees:
My cultural capital here: Chicago Bears season-ticket holder, and someone who writes about sports for various publications (and teaches sports lit). My prediction: football as we know it will be done within 15 years.
As evidence emerges, and it is constantly emerging, that CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) does not just occur at the game’s highest (and most brutal) levels, the NFL and NCAA, lawsuits will continue. The science is there, and it will come out in court; not just whether the NFL or NCAA lied to their players or hid the risks, but the pure fact of the risks.
This will lead insurance companies to refuse to provide liability coverage for football leagues and players, since they know they will have to pay out too much. And as soon as school districts are unable to get liability insurance, they will be forced to drop scholastic football, even if parents would allow their sons to continue to play. Without the flow of grade school players to high schools to college, the NFL withers and dies.
I predict that it will be transformed into something like flag football, with an emphasis on the passing game, speed, and hands-skills. But the day and age of gigantic defensive players obliterating receivers, quarterbacks and running backs is soon to be over. And I’m OK with that.
Another is on the same page:
The way it will happen is by losing its feeder program. Football is big money and the NFL has deep pockets. The same with college to a lesser degree. The weak link is high school. There are already yearly budget battles in most school districts across the country. It isn't a very big leap to see that a few lawsuits could start a cascade of high schools ceasing their football programs. They simply wouldn't be able to afford it.
Another:
I have no idea if football is going away. But to anyone who says that football is too big to fail, I would point out that the most popular spectator sports in the early part of the 20th century were boxing and horse racing. I am sure that the idea that those sports would be seen as fourth-tier entertainment in 2012 would have seemed as crazy then as the idea of football going away does now. Things change.
Another:
The sport probably won’t literally disappear, but it could easily end up like boxing – once among the country’s favorite pastimes, now relegated to the fringes of polite society due almost entirely to the obvious toll that it takes on its participants. Even sadder, absent an outright ban and assuming some level of continuing popularity, the only people who will play football will be the same people who continue to box (and, for what it’s worth, join the military): the poor and otherwise dispossessed who don’t perceive any other options and can’t afford to worry themselves about things like brain trauma.
Another notes:
This isn't the first time football's injury risk has risen to the level of national discussion. Over 100 years ago President Roosevelt was faced with a movement to ban the game based on the rising number of injuries (and deaths!) at the high school and collegiate levels (pro football was only in its infancy at the time). As this article points out, Roosevelt interceded and was able to convince the football powers that be to institute badly needed changes that saved the game.
Would Obama step in at this point? Doubtful based on the political costs, as well as the other external pressures the NFL already faces to clean up the sport. In fact, despite that fact that it's coming too late, the current NFL Commissioner's signature issue is safety in the game. It's one of the reasons he came down so hard on the Saints during the recent "Bountygate" scandal.
The NFL will clean up it's image and improve the safety of the game. This time around it won't be a meeting with the President that does it, but the effect on the bottom line.
It's now been a year at the Beast and I'm happy to note that our traffic this past year reached 91 million page views, up around 26 percent over our last year at the Atlantic, and our monthly readership of around 1.1 million individual people across the planet is as solid as ever.
Thanks as always for your loyalty, engagement and criticism.
Not all countries are as cowardly, morally compromised and as authoritarian as the US when it comes to investigating claims of torture (as is required under the Geneva Conventions):
Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Thursday that Poland has become the "political victim" of leaks from U.S. officials that brought to light aspects of the secret rendition program. In his most forthcoming comments on the matter to date, Tusk said an ongoing investigation into the case is proof of Poland's democratic credentials and that Poland cannot be counted on in the future in such clandestine enterprises.
"Poland will no longer be a country where politicians – even if they are working arm-in-arm with the world's greatest superpower – could make some deal somewhere under the table and then it would never see daylight," said Tusk, who took office four years after the site was shuttered. "Poland is a democracy where national and international law must be observed," Tusk said. "This issue must be explained. Let there be no doubt about it either in Poland or on the other side of the ocean."
Ponder that statement for a moment: "Poland is a democracy where national and international law must be observed." It is not something that could be have been said by either president Bush or president Obama. One committed war crimes; the other refused to investigate or prosecute. Bush knew intimately about the torture on Polish soil – and unwittingly told its then-prime minister. But here's where the rub truly emerges:
Poland is the only country that has opened a serious investigation into the matter, something which Bodnar says is a sign of maturing in this 23-year-old democracy, with prosecutors, journalists and human rights lawyers all trying to seek truth and accountability.
When will American democracy mature enough to do the same?
The biggest change came among women under 50. In mid-February, just under half of those voters supported Obama. Now more than six in 10 do while Romney’s support among them has dropped by 14 points, to 30%. The president leads him 2-1 in this group.
That's a huge margin, making Ann Romney that much more important a figure, as Lois Romano notes. James Joyner is shocked:
Weeks of bizarre talk about contraception and vaginal ultrasounds has surprisingly alienated women from the Republican Party.
Jamelle Bouie bets that social issues will dog Romney:
Indeed, for as much as Romney wants to focus on the economy and leave social issues by the wayside, it’s not clear whether that’s possible for his campaign. Conservative voters distrust the former Massachusetts governor just enough so that he might have to show his loyalty with declarations on abortion, contraception, and other areas of women’s health. Already, he has pledged to take federal funding away from Planned Parenthood, and I expect him to repeat the promise during the general election.
Republican blogger Christian Heinze does offer a counter-argument against the poll’s bottom line, suggesting that the inclusion of WI, NM and MI as “swing states” skews it because Obama is almost certain to easily carry all three. I’m certainly interested to learn a Republican is willing to concede WI so early. But in any event, Heinze’s objection doesn’t explain the vast and increasing gender gap, or the likelihood the GOP has now dangerously raised expectations for a major cultural counter-revolution among its Christian Right-Tea Party base, while alarming a lot of women that they may well mean it.
My cover-essay in the new Newsweek is now out for Holy Week. It's an attempt to distill and order many of the thoughts that have been laid out on the Dish for months (years?) now on what Christianity is, how it has become horribly disfigured in our time, and why we need desperately to recover its simple truths.
It's really an essay on the fundamental incompatibility of Christianity with human power; and therefore the inherent corruption that occurs when politics and religion combine (especially primarily in just one political party). It's about a Christianity unafraid of truth and open minds, and yet also dedicated to humility, devotion and the simple, impossible demands of Jesus of Nazareth. It starts with Jefferson and ends with Saint Francis. It's animated by an immersion in Thomas Merton's work, and his later evolution toward a more radical nonviolence and Buddhist outreach. A reader sent me this quote this morning (from New Seeds of Contemplation), and it's at the kernel of what I believe is the struggle we are all involved with:
Strong hate, the hate that takes joy in hating, is strong because it does not believe itself to be unworthy and alone. It feels the support of a justifying God, of an idol of war, an avenging and destroying spirit. From such blood-drinking gods the human race was once liberated, with great toil and terrible sorrow, by the death of a God Who delivered Himself to the Cross and suffered pathological cruelty of His own creatures out of pity for them. In conquering death He opened their eyes to the reality of a love which asks no questions about worthiness, a love which overcomes hatred and destroys death.
But men have now come to reject this divine revelation of pardons and they are consequently returning to the old war gods, the gods that insatiably drink blood and eat the flesh of men. It is easier to serve the hate-gods because they thrive on the worship of collective fanaticism. To serve the hate-gods, one has only to be blinded by collective passion. To serve the God of Love one must be free, one must face the terrible responsibility of the decision to love in spite of all unworthiness whether in oneself or in one’s neighbor.
"One must be free."
(Photo: Jefferson cut the “diamonds” of Christ’s teaching out of the “dunghill” of the New Testament. By Hugh Talman / Smithsonian National Museum of American History.)
Santorum doubles down on the Romney = Obama meme, which is quite something given how Romney is almost certain now to be the nominee. The ad is pretty crude and doesn’t bode well for Republican unity this fall:
The Dish 