Author: Andrew Sullivan

Here's a rundown on what is being cut from Britain's defense budget. From the lede: "PM David Cameron said defence spending would fall by 8% over four years." Richard Norton-Taylor contends that the British defense review means no more "Iraq-scale military interventions":

Though defence chiefs said … they will still have significant expeditionary forces, they will not be able to intervene on the scale of recent years. According to new defence planning assumptions, UK forces will be able to carry out one enduring brigade-level operation with up to 6,500 personnel, compared to the 10,000 now in Afghanistan, plus two smaller interventions, at any one time.

Alternatively, they will be able to mount a one-off, time-limited major intervention – "with sufficient warning" – of up to three brigades with about 30,000 personnel, which is two-thirds of the force deployed to Iraq in 2003.

Yglesias thinks the sort of cuts that the British are pursuing is bad news for America:

Cutting conventional military personnel while spending money on renewing Britain’s nuclear arsenal is more-or-less the worst case scenario from an American perspective. The UK’s ability to contribute to the “global public goods” functions of the Pentagon will be diminished more than is necessary to meet the monetary targets, and British possession of a nuclear second-strike capability accomplishes nothing whatsoever for America. What’s more, it doesn’t really accomplish anything for the United Kingdom either—it’s just a way of hanging on to a bit of faded imperial glory.

Greg Scoblete shrugs:

I think it's useful to keep in mind that if we accept the fact that waging preventative wars followed by large-scale military occupation is not the proper way to combat terrorism, then fielding a smaller army is not necessarily a major setback to international security.

Ezra gives a quick lesson in hardball:

There's a question as to whether politicians should play hardball and another question as to whether any particular instance of hardball is smart. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, for instance, were effective in part because they were an independent organization, and thus the backlash against them didn't mean a backlash against George W. Bush. Similarly, though Karl Rove suspects that Al Gore's campaign was behind the revelation of Bush's 1976 DUI, the campaign never admitted that and refused to comment on it. By contrast, John McCain just looked foolish when he started bringing up William Ayers.

Bernstein thinks that to "the extent that the parties have followed different strategies, it's not at all clear that Republicans have benefited." His more general principle:

Conservative activists believe … Republican pols are a bunch of wimpy, half-hearted idealists who allow ruthless liberal Democrats, who play this game for keeps, to trample all over them. Indeed, this follows the Iron Law of Politics that everyone believes that the other side is better at the mechanics of politics: the other side is always more ruthless in their exploitation of the rules and willingness to ignore ethical niceties, more tactically adept, better at extracting money from their base, and (depending on who is complaining) either better at ignoring the policy demands of their crazy ideological base in order to win the center or better at addressing the policy demands of the base, while our side uses and then ignores the policy demands of the base. 

Adam Ozimek reads a year-old paper (pdf) on the subject:

Among the many interesting results they report are that 40% of prostitutes have a college degree, and 80% have had some college. Apparently, the current economic downturn has led to churn in the industry and lower wages, as supply has expanded and demand has contracted. For many women this puts the market wage below their reservation wage, which drives them out of the market.

Roja Heydarpour brings us the latest on plight of albinos in Tanzania. Albinos have been killed and maimed because of the ludicrous belief that albino body parts hold magical powers 0 a story the Dish has mentioned in the past. The current state of affairs:

Politicians who want to win elections wear large rings with albino powder hidden inside, she said. High-powered CEOs buy the potion in order to make more money. And the police are in on it, too.

The Tanzanian government finally banned the practice nearly two years ago, in part due to [journalist Vicky] Ntetema’s stories. They were embarrassed by their country’s now-tarnished image. But the ban was revoked last month, conveniently close to the general elections on Oct. 31, said Ntetema.

The witch doctors wield enormous power in a country where more than 90 percent believe and are afraid of being bewitched, she said. So even if a politician running for office does not buy the potion, the witch doctor threatens to tell his community to withhold its votes.

A couple months back Graeme Wood filed an excellent report on the continued widespread belief in witchcraft in parts of Africa.

(Image by Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images)

Adam Serwer sees how the military allowing openly gay recruits, for the moment at least, could come back to bite Obama. A couple scenarios:

The administration now finds itself hurtling toward an irreconcilable moral conflict. If its repeal effort fails and another court upholds DADT, those openly gay and lesbian recruits will be in danger of discharge. But just as the images of happy, newly married same-sex couples put the lie to the apocalyptic predictions of societal breakdown made by marriage equality opponents, the admission of openly gay and lesbian service members will further erode the already feeble basis for keeping DADT. The skies will not crack open, thunder will not roll, al-Qaeda will not suddenly establish a Western caliphate with Washington as its capitol. Life will go on largely as it has before.

But if the administration successfully appeals Judge Phillips's decision, it will find itself obligated to enforce a policy the president himself says he opposes and that he says undermines national security, a policy with no empirical, legal, or moral basis. The administration will have effectively instituted its own Proposition 8, retroactively denying rights to individuals who already have them. That will be significantly harder to explain or justify than simply maintaining the status quo. After having promised to repeal DADT, Obama would be responsible for its ongoing survival. 

Chris Geidner reports on the DOJ appealing the DADT stay request to the Ninth Circuit. Wonk Room reads the DOJ's stay request and realizes that it "doesn’t note a single specific instance in which the Pentagon has received a complaint about mass resignations or disruption in the time since it has complied with Philips’ order and stopped implementing the policy."

John Goodman's case against the health care reform law:

Most people intuitively know that the worst thing government can do in the middle of the deepest recession in 70 years is enact policies that increase the expected cost of labor. Yet that is exactly what happened last spring, with the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) …

In four years’ time, the minimum cost of labor will be a $7.25 cash minimum wage and a $5.89 health minimum wage (family), for a total of $13.14 an hour or about $27,331 a year. (I think you can see already that no one is going to want to hire low-wage workers with families.)

Brad DeLong and his commenters argue that the "health minimum wage" is effectively paid for by premiums and by government subsidies for low-wage workers. DeLong's mantra:

There is no employer mandate in the bill. Employers will still be able to offer workers $7.25/hour to work.

A reader writes:

You stated, "I don't believe in mandatory provision of food and shelter to those who have decided to be free-loaders, as opposed to the unlucky or incapable." That's all well and good, but in practice, when the presence of poverty and homelessness and its consequences negatively impacts tourism, social atmosphere, and the desire to do business and take up residence, there's an economic and quality-of-life incentive – self-interest, effectively – to provide food/shelter to those types of people, not just a moral one.

Another writes:

On food and shelter provision, this is a tough call. 

I agree that "freeloaders" who make little or no effort to help themselves should be limited, if not cut off.  But what if these same folks have, unfortunately, children?  Then what?  I'm not leaving those kids on their own, and I doubt that each case would warrant taking the child away.  So, I'd probably still give a bunch of adults who may not "deserve" the provisions.

Another:

If you don't believe in mandatory food and shelter for freeloaders, what do you think Christ meant when he said that if a man asks for your coat, give him your cloak also? I'm not playing "gotcha"; I honestly have never heard any person of faith (of which I'm one) even discuss this passage, let alone attempt to reconcile it with free market capitalism.

What Christ is saying is "give him your cloak also." Not have a government that confiscates your coat based on its beliefs and not yours. Another:

I think the most prominent distinction between you and Hertzberg is that you want to differentiate between free loaders and those who are unlucky or incapable.  But how would you propose that we make this distinction?  Surely a limited and humble government could not have any role in determining who is lazy and who is unlucky or incapable.

A simple example: long-term vs short term welfare. I favored welfare reform on these principles. On healthcare, it's tough, because it's very difficult to make distinctions for care based on illnesses that may or may not be related to lifestyle, and because the sick definitionally cannot cure themselves. Ditto unemployment benefits which expire after a while. We do not make them permanent, although it's pragmatic to extend them if the economic circumstances truly make employment impossible.

See: who needs a raucous comments section, when you can actually have a civil to and fro?

Doug Mataconis thinks through political commercials in the Tivo era:

…there are some forms of television programming that typically aren’t watched on a delayed basis, specifically news and sports. As DVR use increases, you’re likely to see political advertising concentrated around these types of programs where the audience is more captive than it is for, say, Wednesday night’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

I’ve been watching the baseball playoffs all month, for example, and even though the part of Virginia I reside in doesn’t have any competitive races, I’m still seeing ads for candidates in surrounding Congressional Districts. Campaign ads are also showing up during the local and national news on the broadcast networks, and on the cable news networks. As long as that audience is still there, campaigns will continue buying ads.

Second, the types of programs that most people record on their DVRs, evening comedy and dramas, aren’t usually the ones where you see much political advertising to begin with. Partly this is because the commercial time for these shows belongs, mostly, to the networks rather than the local stations and it makes little sense for a Senate candidate in Nevada to buy national television time. Obviously, this will be different in a Presidential campaign year.