Month: June 2012

Nothing, says Marina Ottaway:

Whoever prevails in the short run will only have the true support of a minority and at best a grudging acceptance from another segment of the population. The outcome of these particular battles, like the outcome of the battle to oust Mubarak, will not be definitive, but part of a long war. It would be unwise for the United States to take sides now.

Steven Cook thinks that even if Shafiq, the old regime's candidate, beats the Muslim Brotherhood's champion, Washington will still lose:

[P]recisely because Shafiq represents the old order, he needs to demonstrate some space between himself and the policies of the past.

Even if he wants to roll back the changes that have occurred since the uprising and has held himself out as the restorer of order, the uprising has fundamentally altered Egypt’s political arena in important ways.  For all their problems and political limitations, revolutionary groups, liberals, leftists, Salafists and a variety of others have discovered ways to make their voices heard.  It’s clear that Shafiq understands this as he has softened his position on the uprising considerably since it became evident that he would be in the run-off.  Like Morsi, Shafiq needs to appeal to voters beyond his natural constituency.  The twin exigencies of broadening his base and demonstrating that he isn’t Hosni Mubarak in a different Rolex and a cardigan sweater means that, among other things, Shafiq may well run and potentially govern against the United States.  The U.S.-Egypt relationship is too big and juicy a political target for Shafiq to ignore because it serves both of his political interests at once.

Katha Pollitt makes the case:

I agree with French feminist Elisabeth Badinter, who, in her short, sharp polemic The Conflict, argues that intensive, obsessive mothering bodes ill for women’s equality. As long as women’s primary focus is domestic, men will run the world and make the rules (and if you are happy with a Congress that’s only 17 percent female, you can stop reading right now). Dr. Bill Sears, guru of attachment parenting and, not incidentally, a devout Christian, is fairly explicit that mothers shouldn’t have jobs—he even suggests that couples borrow money from their parents to enable the wife to stay home. (That Romney-esque suggestion shows how class-based attachment parenting is.)

Jean Kazez counters:

I don't buy this idea that attachment-style parenting is inflicted on women, and can just be discarded, to overcome the work-family conflict that's a problem for many women. Attachment-style parenting (at least in its essentials) runs deep, and many women choose it for themselves.  Those that don't care for it have dozens, if not hundreds, of other child-care books to choose from.  There's plenty of validation out there for people who want to parent in a different style, or who want to return to work and personal freedom as quickly as possible.

Recent Dish on attachment parenting here.

Demographics are a major factor:

[S]outhern Europe’s economic disaster is both reflected — and is largely caused by — a demographic decline that, if not soon reversed, all but guarantees the continent’s continued slide. For decades, the wealthier countries of the northern countries — notably Germany — have offset very low fertility rates and declining domestic demand by attracting migrants from other countries, notably from eastern and southern Europe, and building highly productive export oriented economies.

In contrast, the so-called Club Med Countries– Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain–have not developed strong economies to compensate for their fading demographics outside pockets of relative prosperity such as Milan. 

Lena Greenberg, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, reacts after misspelling 'geistlich' during the final rounds of the 2012 Scripps National Spelling Bee in National Harbor, Maryland, on Thursday, May 31, 2012. By Chuck Myers/MCT via Getty Image.

Jonathan Bernstein thinks that the economy is mediocre enough that the quality of the campaigns will likely be the key determining factor in the fall:

[T]his may well be an election cycle in which the small but real effects that campaigns and candidates can make could be decisive. You can think of a presidential election as a combination of objective factors (economic growth, perceptions of the performance of the president) that basically set the parameters of the election, yielding a small range of likely outcomes. In 2008, with the economy tanking, the entire range pointed to an out-party victory; in a year like 1996 or 1984, with the economy healthy, the entire range fell well within re-election for the incumbent. This may well be a year in which the range straddles wins for either side. That still doesn’t necessarily make silly-season nonsense — the one-day stories in the spring that are long forgotten by fall — any more important, but it can definitely mean that the real campaigning could very well make a difference. And that’s how it’s been for many months now.

A reader writes:

Can I be the token "millennial" who defends Jonah Goldberg? (My gag reflex kicks in just typing that.) Listen, he's right about a lot. I'm 26, male, employed, engaged. I admit it: I'm not completely financially independent, but that's mostly due to my two-year detour in grad school on my way to eventually teaching high school. That's my fault, mostly. But I went to a state school for undergrad because the private schools were way too expensive. I have friends who went to the liberal arts schools because "the campuses were pretty". They are still in huge debt, but they didn't have to be.

My brother and I always say that the best (and only) thing my generation does better than our parents is we are more accepting of gays. Other than that, you will not find a more entitled, narcissistic generation of young people.

For all the criticism of the boomers, at least they actually went to Woodstock. We sit around and click on a "like" button and we think we're "interacting." You can not sit down with any of my generational kinfolk and have a real conversation because of the iPhone obsession. My grown adult, male, college-educated friends still play video games and dress like children and stay out late to see some superhero movie. The first 30 minutes of The Social Network is The Graduate of my generation: dudes sitting in dorms being dicks to each other behind a computer screen – the zeitgeist summed up quite nicely. Even the partying in college always seemed to me to have a sinister, aggressive edge to it. I don't know what it is.

Maybe we are the first generation of the truly post-modern world, where everything is subjective and really all about us. Maybe we are the first generation of kids who were never told "no" by our new-agey parents who didn't want to hurt our feelings. Sorry millennials, it's time to face some unpleasant facts. We don't need to all be Willy Lomans in our lives, but I just wish my generation would shut up sometimes.

Rant over.

More in this thread here, here and here.

Pivoting off of the D'Angelo story we highlighted, Stefan BC opens up about his own eating disorder:

Whether you call it something cute like "manorexia" or clinical like "Body Dysmorphic Disorder" the fact of matter remains that there is an underreported and frankly misunderstood perception of what it is like being a man and suffering from what is quite obviously a severe mental health problem. Too often we as a society are quick to label eating disorders or a pre-occupation with one’s appearance as a wholly female problem, allowing our ingrained sexism to dismiss such issues as weaknesses when they are exhibited by men. It was this sort of shitty double standard that at least contributed to me never seeking treatment or even confining the depths of what I was experiencing until I finally “confessed” as much to Molly (the person who would later become my wife).

(Photo: US boxer Timothy Bradley shows his abs before a media workout at Fortune Gym on May 29, 2012 in Los Angeles, California. By Joe Klamar/Getty.)

A reader writes:

The United States has, in fact, been reducing its emissions faster than Europe – just in the period after your linked chart ends.  The International Energy Agency released new data last week that shows energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in the United States have fallen 430m tonnes, or 7.7%, since 2006 (which happens to be the end date for the  to which you linked). This reduction is the largest of any of the countries surveyed, including Europe.

How has the U.S. done this?  Mostly because of coal-to-gas switching for electric generation, which reduces carbon dioxide by half for the same amount of electricity generated.  Why has that happened?  Natural gas production has boomed since 2007 because of new technologies that allow the commercial production of natural gas from shale rock.

As a result, natural gas prices dropped from $13 in 2008 to below $2 this past winter.  Coal prices, meanwhile, have increased, creating a narrowing price dynamic between the fuels that has driven more gas and less coal into electric generation.  More gas and less coal means far less carbon dioxide emissions.

Europe has not seen the same changes in their natural gas market, so the economics for coal-to-gas switching are not there.  And some of its policies lately are downright counterproductive to their climate goals.  France has banned hydraulic fracturing, the technique used to extract natural gas from shale rock, so it is unlikely their natural gas production will increase up any time soon.  And Germany, which has made admirable and much-needed strides in expanding solar power, has banned zero-carbon nuclear in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, and has therefore has had to use more coal-fired generation to meet its energy needs.

None of this lets the U.S. off the hook for refusing to ratify Kyoto and install policies and mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gases.  But the record should be clear: the U.S. is reducing its emissions faster than Europe right now, at the moment its most important.

A roadtrip viewed through the eyes of Google Street View:

Details:

In this fascinating short video titled Chemin Vert, Rome-based artist Giacomo Miceli takes you on a fascinating road trip through a warped version of Earth known as a polargraphic projection, that spans five continents and four seasons using footage extracted from Google Street View.

Timothy Lee recalls Milton Friedman's monetary policy views:

If Milton Friedman were still with us, he would be able to lend his prestige as a Nobel Laureate and his credibility with conservatives to building a consensus for monetary expansion. Had he lived to see his 100th birthday this year, he could have saved the world economy trillions of dollars of lost output.

Ryan Avent tongue-lashes the world's central banks:

[H]ere we are, with many of the world's larger economies facing difficulty, with high unemployment common across the rich world, with financial conditions deteriorating, and with political systems paralysed. Markets are fleeing into the few assets that look safe, commodity prices, equities, and currency movements are all indicating a large and sustained drop in demand expectations. And the world's most important central bankers are confused over whether or not to act out of concern over inflation and seeming terror that inflation might ever rise to and stay for a while at, oh, 3%. They seem horrified by the idea that central banks might—might—need, at some future point, to bring inflation expectations back into line, as they did in the early 1980s. Never mind, of course, that the experience of the early 1980s was a sunny day in the park compared to what the rich world has gone through since 2008, and heaven compared to what might loom ahead.