The Dish

Michael Roston:

If there is anything that shows the divide between Wall Street and Main Street, it’s the contrast between a day when the stock market gleefully returns to five-digit territory, and the military beats its recruitment goals.

Robert Frost:

O hushed October morning mild,   
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;   
To-morrow’s wind, if it be wild,   
Should waste them all.   

The crows above the forest call;           
To-morrow they may form and go.   
O hushed October morning mild,   
Begin the hours of this day slow,   

Make the day seem to us less brief.   
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,          
Beguile us in the way you know;   
Release one leaf at break of day;   

At noon release another leaf;   
One from our trees, one far away;   
Retard the sun with gentle mist;           
Enchant the land with amethyst.   

Slow, slow!   
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,   
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,   
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—           
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

The BBC reports:

The Guttmacher Institute's survey found abortion occurs at roughly equal rates in regions where it is legal and regions where it is highly restricted. It did note that improved access to contraception had cut the overall abortion rate over the last decade. But unsafe abortions, primarily illegal, have remained almost static.

Dan Savage pounces:

Banning abortion only makes abortions more dangerous and kills women—which is what many opponents of abortion are after, really. They want people who have sex to be punished. Seventy-thousand woman die every year as a result of unsafe abortions in countries where abortion is illegal. So let's just say it, shall we? American opponents of reproductive freedom—people who seek to ban abortion—are trying to kill American women. The end.

Not so fast, says Michael New:

[T]he media’s analysis [of the study] is faulty. Most of the countries where abortion is prohibited are in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. These countries have low per capita income and a higher incidence of social pathologies that may increase the perceived need for abortion. This nuance is not picked up in any of the media coverage of the AGI report.

Interestingly, AGI has also released research that demonstrates the effectiveness of pro-life laws. This summer it released a literature review showing that 20 of 24 studies found that public funding of abortion increased abortion rates. Other AGI research has demonstrated that parental-involvement laws and well-designed informed-consent laws also reduce the incidence of abortion. Unfortunately, research like that typically receives scant attention from the mainstream media.

I'm not an expert on the studies New cites but the report itself clearly shows that liberalization of abortion laws and broad access to contraception through insurance is a highly effective policy mix in a developed country to reduce the abortion rate. I.e., by the Christianist argument, it is clearly saving lives. Here's a statistic worth mulling over, a comparison with a country culturally not far from the US:

Western Europe is held up as an example of what access to contraceptive services can achieve, and the Netherlands – with just 10 abortions per 1,000 women compared to the world's 29 per 1,000 – is held up as the gold standard. Here, young people report using two forms of contraception as standard.

Even the UK, which has a relatively high [abortion] rate, fares well in comparison to the US, where the number of abortions is among the highest in the developed world. The institute says this rate is in part explained by inconsistencies in insurance coverage of contraceptive supplies.

What are the odds that the Christianists are prepared to do the one thing that would actually reduce abortions dramatically: guarantee free contraception as part of a public option. Nothing would make the GOP's head explode more; and yet nothing would do more to achieve one of their alleged chief goals.

The price of fundamentalism.

A.J. Rosmiller echos some of the thoughts I had here:

To be at a “critical juncture” implies that one side or the other is poised to decisively gain the upper hand and therefore to win. But the situation in Afghanistan is almost the exact opposite of that. I will likely have my pundit card revoked for saying so–nothing diverts attention like saying that a situation isn’t at a critical turning point–but it’s true.

After eight years of fighting, two things seem clear: First, the insurgency does not have the capability to defeat U.S. forces or depose Afghanistan’s central government; and, second, U.S. forces do not have the ability to vanquish the insurgency. It’s true that the Taliban has gained ground in recent months, but, absent a full and immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops, it cannot retake sovereign control. This is not to say that Afghanistan isn’t unstable; it clearly is. That has been the case for eight years, however, and, in the absence of some shocking, unforeseen development, it could be true for another eight or 18 or 80 years. An increase of tens of thousands of troops will not change that fact, nor will subtle tactical changes. Rather than teetering on the edge of some imagined precipice, the situation in Afghanistan is at a virtual stalemate.

But that would not make McChrystal a hero, would it? Or gin up a big old right-left battle at home. Yglesias joins the fray. The debate reminds me of this from Flarfblog:

Q: Is the Taliban a threat?
A: Of course. The Taliban is an ongoing threat to our ongoing mission to eliminate the Taliban.
Q: And if we fail to eliminate the Taliban?
A: We cannot fail to eliminate the Taliban, as long as the Taliban continues to provide safe havens and training grounds for the Taliban.
Q: And the Taliban, of course, offers aid and comfort to the ever-dangerous Taliban.
A: Such is the deadly circle of terror.

TNC is unimpressed:

When I was seven I collected stamps. By the time I was eight I was playing D&D. I've been fielding geek insults since I shot my way out my Ma Dukes. This ain't nothing but water to me.

Local news interview here.

Dan Savage has one of his occasional brilliant ideas:

A group of liberal pastors should announce that they're going to mount the pulpit in a particular church at particular time and preach a series of vile, hateful sermons—one right after the other—attacking people of various races and ethnicities, attacking men and women in turn, attacking people for being white, yellow, and brown, and attacking people of other faiths. The semons should rely on biblical passages that have been historically used to justify attacks on and discrimination against people of different faiths, races, ethnicities, genders, etc., though the ages. Alert the authorities and challenge them to come and arrest all these pastors for preaching hate against groups who are already covered by federal hate crime laws.

And YouTube them to maximize the impact.

Bruce Bartlett relays the tale of fellow economist who had the News Hour with Jim Lehrer cancel on him because "another economist [was] prepared to make his points in the form of rap." The juicy part of the cancellation e-mail:

We just learned that Russ Roberts, a professor of economics at George Mason University, who was our second choice for the anti-Keynes position, is shooting a rap video about Keynes and Hayek next week in New York. He has written the lyrics (they are quite good), hired rappers and musicians, and tapped professional music video producers — there will be bling, babes, limos, the works.