Month: June 2012

The Paris Review offers suggestions:

[T]here is the dual nature of the question: Does the author wish to come across as a poseur for some reason, or attract a woman of substance?  If his goal is (inexplicably) the former, the female contingent offered the following names: Madness and Civilization; The Power Broker; Žižek (any), The Brothers Karamazov. (All worthy reads, needless to say, but often used for ostentatious or intimidating purposes.) And, added one, "I like DFW, but he’s the novelist equivalent of a neg."

Aaron Carroll compares Obamacare to a 1993 Washington state healthcare law, which tried to create near-universal healthcare without a mandate:

Here’s [pdf] a nice graphic demonstrating the number of insurance companies offering individual policies in WA state over time … When the law was enacted, there were 19 such companies. Then the individual mandate was struck down. Since the other regulations remained intact, a death spiral started. By 1995, 16 companies remained. By 1999, only 2 companies remained. The rate of uninsured in WA state was 13% in 1993. By 1999, it was 15%.

Which is presumably just fine by Mitt Romney. Sarah Kliff piles on.

* See here for metaphor explanation.

"I had really hoped Alabama would be a place that could learn from its mistakes, but it doesn’t want to be that," – Matt Lacey, a member of a Christian group defending illegal Latino immigrants in Alabama.

Meet Sister Jeannine Gramick, silenced by the Vatican, speaking holy truth to corrupt power – all week on the Dish. In the first installment, she speaks of how Saint Paul's message is inextricable from gay equality and dignity.

Adam Gopnik puts Olympic fandom under the microscope:

Americans are not the only people to succumb to national Olympic hysteria, but we are, perhaps, the most consumed by it. We root for our kind in every sport we see, whereas most nations prudently limit the number of sports they follow to begin with. (Watch the Olympics in France, and you would think that they are essentially an international meet devoted to the odd duo of fencing and bicycle racing—the two summer sports in which the French most often excel.)

A male reader writes:

My husband Jimmy and I recently celebrated our wedding here in Brooklyn, and my mom and her new husband came up for the festivities. This was a totally impromptu performance by my mom at the request of friends who just started asking her to sing something. Though I expected she would go with something from the Rodgers and Hammerstein catalog, Puccini is what she delivered. Absolutely brilliant. I'm still picking myself up off the floor. I've never heard her sing this and it's one of my favorite pieces. The reactions of my friends Sarah (flower dress on the right) and Neal (lilac shirt next to her) are priceless …

A small reminder: Mitt Romney wants to ban these occasions by constitutional amendment across the entire country, and forcibly divorce those of us living happy married lives. What he hasn't counted on are our moms. You think Puccini is surprising? What till Mitt messes with her son and son-in-law.

After Obama's end-run around Romney on deferring deportations of young native-born Americans who have broken no law apart from being born, the Latina Oprah, Cristina Saralegui, puts her invaluable imprimatur on the president. It's getting more and more necessary for Mitt to max out his percentage of the Caucasian vote:

Most polls this spring show Obama running near the 52 percent he won among those upscale white women in 2008, and also remaining very close to his 80 percent showing among all minorities. If Obama can hold that level of support from those two groups, Romney could amass a national majority only by winning nearly two-thirds of all other whites—the men with college degrees, and the men and women without them. To put that challenge in perspective, Reagan, while winning his historic landslide, carried a combined 66.5 percent of those three groups. To defeat Obama, in other words, Romney may need to equal Reagan.

Harry Enten keeps tabs on Obama's share of the black vote:

There is a tremendous difference … between leading by "a long way" and repeating his 2008 levels. Black voters have supported Democratic presidential candidates for as long as President Obama has been alive. African Americans went for John Kerry, even, by a very large 77 points in 2004. Combined with making up 11% of the electorate, African Americans added 8.5 points (77 x 0.11) to Kerry's margin. Kerry lost the popular vote to President Bush by only 2.5 percentage points, but he would have won by 0.7 points if black voters had contributed as many points to his total as they did to Obama in 2008.

Late last week, Paul Werdel wondered how the GOP will respond to the upcoming healthcare ruling:

 

Jon Cohn runs down the Court's schedule on releasing the ruling:

Another Monday, another morning of waiting to see whether the Supreme Court will rule on health care reform. The justices still have several decisions to issue this term, including high-profile cases on immigration and broadcast standards of decency, so they may wait until next Monday. They might also release decisions this coming Thursday or perhaps next Thursday. In either case, they would announce beforehand that decisions are forthcoming on those days, at least if they keep to custom. (As far as I know, they will not simply release a decision without warning.).

Buzzfeed created a decision tree for various Obamacare rulings. Justice Ginsburg's slightly bitter quote about it all here.

Maia Szalavitz addresses the canard:

Like previous studies, [a recent study in Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, pdf] found no association between the number of [medical marijuana] dispensaries in a neighborhood and rates of violent crime or property crime. The number of alcohol-selling outlets in an area, however — even after controlling for demographic factors and poverty — is consistently linked with rates of violent crime, according to the research.

Chris Roberts explains how federal-level law enforcement has ignored this fact:

Dispensary-related crime, and instances of this crime near children, are exactly why local United States Attorney Melinda Haag shut some 10 state-legal Bay Area cannabis dispensaries since Oct. 7, 2011. Haag presented no data along with her claims, and a recent study conducted by UCLA researchers won't help her either. Based on crime trends in Sacramento in 2009, the study found "no observed … associations between the density of medical marijuana dispensaries and either violent or property crime rates," and further found that dispensary security measures like door guards and security camera may be crime deterrents.

Meanwhile, Mike Riggs calls out Holder for having "lied" last week to the House Judiciary Committee by claiming that the DOJ has not been prosecuting medical marijuana businesses that are in compliance with state law.

A major freak out from Michael Koplow after the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces decided to write itself into the constitution:

[T]he SCAF is not simply intervening in civilian politics; it is establishing a permanent military veto and permanent martial law that will exist in conjunction with civilian politics. Even if the military does not ever actively remove the president, the president cannot go to war without the SCAF’s approval or do anything to curb the military’s power to indiscriminately arrest civilians or remove SCAF oversight of the legislative process. This is more insidious than a temporary military coup, because it permanently cements the subordination of elected officials to unelected generals. As much as the military was preeminent under Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak, this is a step even farther, since now the military will be actively involved in governing.

Issandr El Amrani thinks protests won't be enough to stop the Army's power grab:

To recapture the imagination of the population, to take their rivals off-balance once again, the revolutionaries have to strike where it’s least expected, and in a manner that is novel. The next battle might not be won in public squares, but in courts, in Parliament, in activism that takes place in dirty alleyways and isolated villages, and in the field of ideas and civil society, with humility and perseverance. And it’s going to take a lot longer than 18 days.

Marc Lynch develops a novel analogy for the Army's moves that suggest a ray of hope. Bel Trew delivers a long dispatch on the view from Egypt itself.

(Photo: Egyptian anti-military protesters demonstrate in Cairo's Tahrir Square against Mubarak-era prime minister and presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq on June 14, 2012. By Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images.)