Author: Andrew Sullivan

She recently complained that her ABC News interview had been edited to maker her look bad. Well, here's the full transcript of the whole fricking thing. Alas, no unedited video to reveal the moments of cluelessness, panic and lies that litter the rhetorical landscape. Enjoy.

Given the news of the day, this interview with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is worth a look:

A reader writes:

Please point this reader to this link. Have him download the data for pre-tax and post-tax Household income.  Then, have him graph the data for the top 1% (pre-tax and post-tax).  Then, have him measure the "much flatter curve" and send in his answer. I'll make a prediction.  His answer will be that he can't measure the "much flatter curve" because there isn't one.

Another:

In this post the readers comments don't really hold up to scrutiny.  If you looked at the same chart, but only went back to the mid-90's as opposed to 1979, you would still see the top 1% income more than double while the middle 60% and bottom 20% remain stagnant, even though tax rates on the highest earners have dropped since the mid 90's.  No attempt to nitpick over tax rates can disguise the fact that income inequality has increased massively in the last couple of decades.

One more:

Doesn't the fact that the incomes are post-tax make the disparity even more stark?

Post-tax means actual take home pay.  Take home pay has not changed one bit for 80% of the population, yet it's increased 5 fold for the top 1%.  You can thank your reader for pointing out what may have been missed, but so long as that chart accurately reflects post-tax income, all tax avoidance strategies have been included in the calculations.

So even if the top 1%'s entire increase in take home pay is due to reduced taxes and not increased income, who cares?  If one person's take home pay stayed stagnant while another person's increased five-fold, EVEN IF that increase was solely due to reduced taxes, wouldn't you still say the income inequality had increased?

The point of the chart still stands.  80% of the population is stuck in neutral with no increase in income and 1% of the population has been pedal to the medal.

Amy Davidson reflects on this video:

It is tempting to think that marriage is not necessary, legally speaking, as long as one is careful about making up wills and signing directives and buying insurance policies. But, from a practical standpoint, that’s just not true (even putting aside the premiums and lawyers’ fees for all those papers). Nor is this only about the elderly, though that’s bad enough: according to the Social Security Web site, there can be benefits for a surviving spouse of any age who is caring for a child (including an adopted child) under the age of sixteen—or older, if the child is disabled—if the widow or widower’s income falls below a certain level. (There are also benefits in the child’s name.) So if your parents were married, there is more of a safety net for your care. And what if your parents weren’t allowed to get married?

Beinart uses the recent NAACP-tea party spat to advocate for class-based affirmative action:

Not only would class-based affirmative action focus remedial efforts on those African Americans and Hispanics who need it most, it would link their fortunes to those of white working-class kids, and undermine the racial-partisan polarization that has marked the Obama years. More white working-class kids at Harvard would mean an American educational elite less easily caricatured by Fox News, and more able to speak across the red-blue divide.

Kevin Drum agrees. With statistics like these on America's fast-disappearing middle-class, they're onto something.

“Unless Israel takes the initiative to achieve lasting peace, [I.F] Stone warned, there would be more wars or a spiraling weapons race in which Israel would become a beseiged and paranoid armed camp… Israel “cannot remain a western outpost in an Afro-Asian world casting off western domination”, he said. “No quickie military victories should blind it to the inescapable – in the long run it cannot defeat the Arabs. It must join them,” – Saul Friedman, ‘Debate Divides U.S Jewry’, Los Angeles Times, January 14 1968.

Cliché knows no genre:

(Hat tip: BF)

First Taiwan, now Brazil:

In his own [presidential] campaign, Mr. Serra has seemingly taken a page from Mr. da Silva’s playbook, vowing to increase significantly the number of families receiving subsidies and the amount of the payments. But he has also said that Mr. da Silva’s Workers’ Party had connections to the FARC. Mr. Serra’s running mate, Indio da Costa, even suggested that the Workers’ Party could be linked to drug trafficking, a comment that led a columnist in a Brazilian newspaper to call him “Serra Palin,” referring to the American vice-presidential candidate.