Conservatism, then and now

National Review in 1957:

"The axiom on which many of the arguments supporting the original version of the Civil Rights bill were based was Universal Suffrage. Everyone in America is entitled to the vote, period. No right is prior to that, no obligation subordinate to it; from this premise all else proceeds.

That, of course, is demagogy. Twenty-year-olds do not generally have the vote, and it is not seriously argued that the difference between 20 and 21-year-olds is the difference between slavery and freedom. The residents of the District of Columbia do not vote: and the population of D.C. increases by geometric proportion. Millions who have the vote do not care to exercise it; millions who have it do not know how to exercise it and do not care to learn. The great majority of the Negroes of the South who do not vote do not care to vote, and would not know for what to vote if they could."

And today:

"One still sometimes hears people make the allegedly “conservative” case for same-sex marriage that it will reduce promiscuity and encourage commitment among homosexuals. This prospect seems improbable, and in any case these do not strike us as important governmental goals...

Both as a social institution and as a public policy, marriage exists to foster connections between heterosexual sex and the rearing of children within stable households. It is a non-coercive way to channel (heterosexual) desire into civilized patterns of living. State recognition of the marital relationship does not imply devaluation of any other type of relationship, whether friendship or brotherhood. State recognition of those other types of relationships is unnecessary. So too is the governmental recognition of same-sex sexual relationships, committed or otherwise, in a deep sense pointless."

Or as Andrew's reader sums it up:

National Review in 1957: Blacks shouldn't be allowed to vote, of course, because 10-year olds aren't allowed to vote. And besides, it wouldn't do them any good to vote anyway.

National Review in 2009: Gays shouldn't be allowed to marry, of course, because brothers aren't allowed to marry. And besides, it wouldn't do them any good to marry anyway.

Andrew concludes:

I wonder how deeply National Review's editors considered the final sentence of their repellent editorial:

If worse comes to worst, and the federal courts sweep aside the marriage laws that most Americans still want, then decades from now traditionalists should be ready to brandish that footnote and explain to generations yet unborn: That is why we resisted.

Does Rich Lowry believe his magazine's position from 1957 should be held up similarly today as a prophetic warning? Was Barack Obama's election the awful consequence of giving the Negroes the vote they didn't know what to do with?

Maybe that was indeed why they "resisted." And maybe gay really is the new black.

I think the pattern in these quotes is a useful reminder of why I'll always be libertarian —or at least "socially liberal"— instead of conservative. National Review was founded in 1955, but had it existed 45 years earlier I bet you could have found essays against women having the right to vote. (Like this recent one, only more pointed and eloquent because the cause wasn't lost)

In a 1975 interview with Reason magazine, Ronald Reagan said:

"I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer, just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals . . . The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom"

This was arguably true once, only to be killed off by Karl Rove, George W. Bush, and his defenders. But even in Reagan's time that desire for individual freedom had limits. Conservatives are ever wary of expanding individual freedom to new, previously discriminated-against individuals.

At worst, preserving the status quo becomes a sort of moral fanaticism.

Robert Stacy McCain recently wrote in the American Spectator that opposing same-sex marriage is a hill conservatives should fight and die on. He opens by discussing a quote from William F. Buckley Jr., who founded National Review in 1955:

Back in the 1970s, [Buckley]. was invited to debate feminist author Germaine Greer at the Oxford Union, but found that he and Greer were unable to agree on the wording of the resolution to be debated. After a long exchange of trans-Atlantic telegrams, Buckley in exasperation cabled his final proposal: "Resolved: Give 'em an inch, they'll take a mile."

In that simple phrase, Buckley summed up a basic truth about the conservative instinct. Over and over, we find ourselves fighting what is essentially a defensive battle against the forces of organized radicalism who insist that "social justice" requires that we grant their latest demand.

So in being for same-sex marriage, am I abetting a group of organized radicals? Interesting. But Buckley also acknowledged in 2004 that:

"Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great."

He was writing about legalizing weed, but I think the point broadly applicable. Sadly it seems many conservatives have now delved head first into fanaticism "against the coming storm".

Update: Wilkinson has a good rebuttal of Stacy's post.

Bacteria communication

If you got 15 min and care about biology, this TED talk is pretty amazing:

The misguided quest for universal coverage

Ramesh Ponnuru's new opinion piece is just what the doctor ordered.

I'm always pleased when someone on the Right has enough grey matter to argue factually and persuasively at a level the Times can publish.  Evan Bayh conservadem/moderates, are you listening?

Personal Urban Mobility & Accessibility

Brought to you by Segway...



It makes more sense than the stand up version. I never understood the logic of owning one of those and a treadmill, but I have a friend who does.

And I certainly prefer it to the American Double-Decker.

Link blag

Radley:

Just so I have this straight, Milton Friedman is a villain because he had a five-hour meeting with murderous dictator Pinochet, gave a lecture at a Chilean university, and because Pinochet later implemented some of Friedman’s ideas (to the great benefit of the Chilean people, I might add). Meanwhile, lefty activists and politicians can freely meet with murderous dictator Fidel Castro, publicly slobber all over him, fete him even as actual Cubans are risking their lives to flee his regime, and there’s nothing ill to be said about them. Because . . . free health care!

Speaking of the U.K. you gotta’ hand it to them. When it comes to massive invasions of privacy and creepy government surveillance, they don’t mess around.

Justice Scalia gives speech praising the Constitution. But only before ensuring that there would be a ban on recording his speech. He then paused the speech to excoriate a journalist for taking still photos of him. I’m sure the irony was lost on him.

Reason: Obama's Secretary of Education is fundamentally dishonest. Cato piles on.

Megan: Glenn Greenwald doesn't know what he's talking about wrt Larry Summers.

Post contra Post: Thankfully not everyone at the paper who writes about climate change is named George Will.

Reason: Now we're bailing out LIFE INSURANCE companies? Fuck me. As Megan says, this can't go on.

Economist: The black market is growing.

Megan: D.C. is poorly governed

How did U.S. marines torture Saddam Hussein? By making him watch South Park, of course.

2008 Tax records reveal Sasha Obama made $136 in allowance money.

Of babies and boys (photos)

Another bizarre anti-SSM ad

Yglesias:

The National Organization for Marriage is ready to try to mobilize people into a state of inchoate fear with this ad designed to make you think that gay marriage is an urgent threat to your liberty:



The closest thing to a legitimate issue here seems to have to do with the Massachusetts public schools. Clearly, a state adopting a non-discriminatory marriage policy doesn’t actually force the state to teach non-discriminatory values in schools. But the two tend to go together. We not only don’t have Jim Crow anymore, but we teach people that racism is wrong. This is, it’s true, a big imposition on racists. And people who don’t like gay people can be legitimately concerned that the spread of gay equality will create an environment in which their children are less likely to share their own prejudices.

On the other hand, that’s all pretty tautological. But what’s the deal with the woman who says “I’m a California doctor forced to choose between my faith and my job”? What is it she wants to do? Does her faith prohibit her from giving medical care to gays and lesbians? That sounds like a pretty sick faith. And a clear violation of existing medical ethics anyway.

Ben Smith has details about the buy. Andrew has some responses to the ad.

I continue to be puzzled by this type of thinking. I can only surmise it's related to the response I received earlier from a white evangelical:

You have missed it again! And you will continue to miss it. This policy will set up a nazi like behavior towards Christians and other religious groups. We never killed gays or imprisoned them for private behavior but this will now move step by step to deny religious freedom. It will move to jail and finally planned extermination. One right of both Christians and probably other groups as well will be taken away. It will start that we can't discriminate against gays and then it will move for other reasons that seem logical to the secular mind. It isn't a gay thing but rather it is a light versus darkness thing. It started in earnest in the Thirties and it has continued. Abortion was a baby step and this will be another in its plan. We will be discriminated against continually like the last 40 years and it will get worse. This is a collision course towards the policies of the Roman Empire and the Communist era of Stalin. But behind it all is not a human face or agenda. You can't see it because you have lost yourself in this world's agenda and are now blind.

Bonus: the ad's auditions

Sane fire from the left

Glenn Greenwald:

Several weeks ago, I noted that unlike the Right -- which turned itself into a virtual cult of uncritical reverence for George W. Bush especially during the first several years of his administration -- large numbers of Bush critics have been admirably willing to criticize Obama when he embraces the very policies that prompted so much anger and controversy during the Bush years.  Last night, Keith Olbermann -- who has undoubtedly been one of the most swooning and often-uncritical admirers of Barack Obama of anyone in the country (behavior for which I rather harshly criticized him in the past) -- devoted the first two segments of his show to emphatically lambasting Obama and Eric Holder's DOJ for the story I wrote about on Monday:  namely, the Obama administration's use of the radical Bush/Cheney state secrets doctrine and -- worse still -- a brand new claim of "sovereign immunity" to insist that courts lack the authority to decide whether the Bush administration broke the law in illegally spying on Americans.

Video:

Rightosphere reactions to piracy

Hot Air:

The Somali pirates have operated in this region for a few years. Thus far, the world has seemed disinclined to put pressure on the pirates of Aden Gulf, despite the headlines they have grabbed lately. The US Navy now has an entree into the fight, and it will be interesting to see how the Obama administration reacts. The US has downlook satellites and a treasure trove of assets with which they can track down the Maersk Alabama and its crew.

Will Obama use that to send the pirates a message about attacking American shipping? Or will this be a “new chance for dialogue”?

TigerHawk:

Somali pirates have decided that it is great time to capture an American flagged ship crewed by our citizens.

Naturally, I have a few questions.

Why has this not happened before? Why were these pirates not deterred by the prospects of a response from the United States Navy (the very first mission of which was to stop piracy from Africa)? What will our president do about it?

This is a far more important moment for Barack Obama than the news media, judging by the lack of coverage on cable news this morning, believes it to be.

NRO's Corner:

Somali pirates have hijacked an American-flagged ship, taking hostage at least 20 Americans and their cargo — aid they were were trying to provide to the distressed Muslim people of Mombassa, Kenya. As Somali pirates have been terrorizing ships on the high seas for months now, TigerHawk is wondering why U.S. vessels haven't been seized before now, and what our new commander-in-chief proposes to do about it.

RedState:

Oh my godz! O Noes!! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

American Merchant Sailors : Not Waiting on Obama’s Help, Take Back Ship From Pirates

How DARE they use self-reliance! Have they no faith in the Obamassiah?

Americans taking care of themselves, without Obama’s government coming to the rescue. Does……. not…… compute. Does……. not…… compute.

Oh I'm so sorry, did someone need to score political points first?

Blindness abounds

UNRR discusses some excerpts from Camille Paglia:

something very ugly has surfaced in contemporary American liberalism, as evidenced by the irrational and sometimes infantile abuse directed toward anyone who strays from a strict party line. Liberalism, like second-wave feminism, seems to have become a new religion for those who profess contempt for religion. It has been reduced to an elitist set of rhetorical formulas, which posit the working class as passive, mindless victims in desperate need of salvation by the state. Individual rights and free expression, which used to be liberal values, are being gradually subsumed to worship of government power.

Irrationality and directing infantile abuse at opponents isn't restricted to the left of course, but it is certainly prevalent among liberals -- many of whom are shocked and horrified at the mere thought than anyone would dare disagree with their deeply held assumptions. Anyone who does so must therefore be evil and acting out of evil motives. Tolerance is one of those virtues the left likes to preach about but almost never practices toward opposing views.

And finally, Paglia's best line:

Conservatives these days are more geared to facts than emotions, and as individuals they seem to have a more ethical, perhaps sports-based sense of fair play.

Obviously that's a massive over-generalization. But it has been true in a general sense as long as I can remember.

This is funny because excepting the liberalism-specific piece that I highlighted, everything else is either exactly backwards or applies more to the reverse side.

Republican conservatives these days are the ones hurling the vast majority of irrational, infantile abuses, at least in public.

And Democratic liberals are the ones more interested in facts and pragmatism. They persist in their delusions on things like the efficacy of state redistributionism, of course, but conservatives have their own delusions on other matters: international relations, what military can or should do, and 'family values'.

How to aid Africa

In response to "End aid, save Africa", Matt has a lot to say:

[This] problem is a function of a common information processing bias, of overestimating efficacy. In other words, you attribute a problem in the world to a presence or lack of direct human agency instead of to complex causal factors -- blaming executives getting too many bonuses as the cause of our latest economic problems is a good example of the efficacy bias (as if simply being less greedy would make the economy work better). It is a helpful bias, usually, though because it directs human efforts at what can be changed.

Military intervention is one thing that this fellow Collier, who I'm guessing (based loosely on reviews) wrote a better book than the lady you cite, argues for (see below). It's a bit too simplistic to see the "solution" as our needing to stop giving directly/having pity and focusing exclusively on macro "root" causes all of which are quite controversial (see The GiveWell Blog: The root causes of poverty). In fact, I think that we should continue to give, but to give more strategically. Better than relying on scattershot private charities as we currently do and as a dogmatic libertarian would suggest, (where people end up often as not giving to something disgusting like suburban soccer teams or music programs for elite suburban youth) would be a built in form on your tax return that you have to choose to OPT-OUT on that would contribute to the best reviewed charities in the world. Maybe even better, would simply be more government taxes going directly to defensible aid projects, AND macroeconomic strategies (which are controversial). Free trade as you welcomely suggest, is a no-brainer. However, some protectionism for those in the most poor billion (i.e., Africa) that are getting crushed by the cheap labor in Asia right now just for the time period for their businesses to start up might make good sense.

Here's a snippet of the Collier (who also sees problems with development aid) book review:

"Reflecting on the tendency of postconflict countries to lapse back into civil war, he argues trenchantly for occasional foreign interventions in failed states. What postconflict countries need, he says, is 10 years of peace enforced by an external military force. If that means infringing national sovereignty, so be it.

At a time when the idea of humanitarian intervention is selling at a considerable discount, this is a vital insight. (One recent finding by Collier and his associates, not reproduced here, is that until recently, former French colonies in Africa were less likely than other comparably poor countries to experience civil war. That was because the French effectively gave informal security guarantees to postindependence governments.) Collier concedes that his argument is bound to elicit accusations of neocolonialism from the usual suspects (not least Mugabe). Yet the case he makes for more rather than less intervention in chronically misgoverned poor countries is a powerful one. It is easy to forget, amid the ruins of Operation Iraqi Freedom, that effective intervention ended Sierra Leone’s civil war, while nonintervention condemned Rwanda to genocide." [As Collier says] “If Iraq is allowed to become another Somalia, with the cry ‘Never intervene,’ the consequences will be as bad as Rwanda.”

...he pins more hope on the growth of international law than on global policing. Perhaps the best help we can offer the bottom billion, he suggests, comes in the form of laws and charters: laws requiring Western banks to report deposits by kleptocrats, for example, or charters to regulate the exploitation of natural resources, to uphold media freedom and to prevent fiscal fraud.

...As Collier rightly says, it is time to dispense with the false dichotomies that bedevil the current debate on Africa: “ ‘Globalization will fix it’ versus ‘They need more protection,’ ‘They need more money’ versus ‘Aid feeds corruption,’ ‘They need democracy’ versus ‘They’re locked in ethnic hatreds,’ ‘Go back to empire’ versus ‘Respect their sovereignty,’ ‘Support their armed struggles’ versus ‘Prop up our allies.’ ”

[ NYT: The Least Among Us ] 

I think utilitarian justifications (such as you claim in the earlier post) are always better than libertarian ones, even if libertarianism is a useful heuristic for a lot of helpful policies. It's just, it should be treated as a heuristic and not a moral principle otherwise it provides unneeded rationalization for the idea that we should just leave things alone and magic will happen.

Giving aid is good and highly defensible from a utilitarian stand point once you figure out where to give it, I think. See GiveWell.

Also potentially helpful, Brookings Global Economy and Development Conference: "What Works in Development? Thinking Big and Thinking Small” (.pdf)

Heuristic is a good word for how I see libertarianism; more so than ideology. Libertarian principles are not a perfect answer to everything, but I've found them to be a very strong and effective heuristic.

I'm sure some forms of aid are much more helpful than others, and GiveWell looks like a good resource.  I'm certainly not going to argue against $10 bednets and 5-cent nutrient packs for children.

But I think it's clear that most aid has been of a harmful welfare sort or been lost to corruption.  When you leave people alone, what happens is not so much magic as self-sufficiency.  This is not an 'unneeded rationalization', but an essential understanding of what makes humans tick.

I'm no expert on how to best carry it out in practice, but my first stab at a solution would be to only provide free aid to children. This should not be administered through parents, because they cannot be trusted to distribute it solely to the kid. Preferably I think it should be provided in exchange for the child getting some basic schooling. Then, after hitting puberty (say, age 14), people should care for themselves.

Training can be provided if necessary.  What they do might be subsistence farming, or a more marketable trade (including agriculture for others' consumption), but regardless people need to learn to work for their own advancement and not rely on free aid to survive.

As for preventing wars and other conflicts, my first stab at a general solution is to come up with a framework for providing security until locals can take over and police themselves. Once they can, leave. Train the police force and help set up a basic civil law system if it helps. When would going into a country and providing this to prevent another Rwanda be warranted/advisable? I can't begin to guess, and I imagine there are many pro and con factors to weigh in avoiding all possible disasters.

The right's answer to Stewart?

Seems I've been missing this, which maybe shouldn't be too surprising:



170 previous 2-minute episodes at youtube.. I think this one is representative:

Your central government at work

Andrew Cline:

New Hampshire's house of representatives is scheduled to vote tomorrow on a bill to mandate that adults wear seat belts. New Hampshire is the last state in the Union not to have an adult seat-belt mandate. Just in time for the debate, new National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data were released Monday. They reveal that New Hampshire has a higher seat-belt usage rate (69.2 percent) than Massachusetts (66.8 percent). Massachusetts, of course, mandates that everyone wear seat belts.

New Hampshire also has the fifth-lowest traffic fatality rate in the nation. Again, it accomplishes this without resorting to a seat-belt mandate.

And yet despite the evidence that a mandate is unnecessary, the house has already given the bill initial approval and is considered likely to pass it again. Why?  One point brought up by mandate supporters over and over again this year: If we pass the mandate, we'll get $3.7 million (FREE!) from Washington.

Damn bribes.  Sigh.  These types of safety laws are such a waste...

Free Bovine Diagram

Physics you can use...

Obama on exceptionalism

Conor flags this answer as deftly handled:

You’re the President of America. At a NATO summit, a European reporter asks you whether you believe in American exceptionalism. How do you negotiate that fraught question without undermining the cooperation you hope to secure abroad, or else angering the folks back home? I’m sure I couldn’t have managed any better than this. It sure would’ve been easier to be president on a mission abroad before the advent of the television camera. I’d love for some historian to sift through the records of presidential visits, and the visits of envoys in the days before presidential travel, noting all the times words were spoken that never would’ve been said had they been transmitted to an American audience.

Equal marriage in Vermont

Burlington Free Press:

MONTPELIER — Vermont has become the fourth state to legalize gay marriage — and the first to do so with a legislature’s vote.

The Legislature voted Tuesday to override Gov. Jim Douglas’ veto of a bill allowing gays and lesbians to marry. The vote was 23-5 to override in the state Senate and 100-49 to override in the House. Under Vermont law, two-thirds of each chamber had to vote for override.

The vote came nine years after Vermont adopted its first-in-the-nation civil unions law.

It’s now the fourth state to permit same-sex marriage. Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa are the others. Their approval of gay marriage came from the courts.

The Vermont Senate voted earlier this morning to override Gov. Jim Douglas' veto of the same-sex marriage legislation.

The vote passed, 23-5.

Ambers:

A great day for the gays and the federalists: for the first time, gay marriage has been legalized in a state through the formal legislative process. Vermont's House and Senate voted overwhelmingly to override Gov. Jim Douglas's veto of a gay marriage bill. On September 1, gays will be allowed to marry in Vermont. That brings to four the numbers of states where gay marriage is legal; Iowa's Supreme Court authorized same-sex unions on Friday; SSMs are also legal in Massachusetts (thanks to a court) and in Connecticut (court-ordered, too). Opponents of gay marriage have been fearing this very day for years. They're going to have to change the way they respond to the issue because they can no longer argue (only) that courts are imposing gay marriage by fiat. In the case of Vermont (and in the case of California, twice before), duly-elected state legislatures affirmatively gave consent to expand or revise the definition of civil marriage. (California's two legislative efforts were vetoed by the governor.)

The Post:

Among the celebrants in the lobby were former Rep. Robert Dostis, D-Waterbury, and his longtime partner, Chuck Kletecka. Dostis recalled efforts to expand gay rights dating to an anti-discrimination law passed in 1992.

"It's been a very long battle. It's been almost 20 years to get to this point," Dostis said. "I think finally, most people in Vermont understand that we're a couple like any other couple. We're as good and as bad as any other group of people. And now I think we have a chance to prove ourselves here on forward that we're good members of our community."

Dostis said he and Kletecka will celebrate their 25th year together in September.

"Is that a proposal?" Kletecka asked.

"Yeah," Dostis replied. "Twenty-five years together, I think it's time we finally got married."

Yglesias:

The interesting thing about the Vermont legislature’s strong vote in favor of gay marriage is that I think it illustrates that far from provoking a backlash against gay rights, pro-equality legal decisions on this front tend to drive the pace of change forward. One factor is that the more people see gay equality in practice, the less frightening it looks. But another factor is the dynamics of political leaders. This isn’t really a topic that politicians want to deal with, even politicians with progressive views and progressive constituents. They would just as soon focus on something else. But a court case smokes the politicians out, and forces the better ones among the bunch to take up the cause and do the right thing.

That, in turn, can help push public opinion forward. Once people see political leaders who they respect debating the issue, it looks like a “mainstream” topic. And when that happens, for a lot of folks basic values of fairness wind up trumping the fact that they’ve lived their whole lives with the rules being a certain way and it seems “unnatural” to change them.

Note that the vote passed 100-49 in the house. All it would have take is a one vote switch to 99-50, and the governor's veto would not have been overridden by the 2/3 requirement, thus postponing equal marriage in Vermont for the near future.

It seems highly likely that if the unanimous Iowa Supreme Court ruling had not just come down the pike 4 days earlier, this veto-proof legislation would have failed.

As with such landmark decisions as Loving v. Virginia and Lawrence v. Texas, the courts have played an important role in guarding the rights of an unpopular minority against the tyranny of a majority.

Anonymous Liberal makes the same point. Andrew has more reax.

Link blag

Mark Thompson: Whaddaya Mean, "Activist"?...

I wanted to give a lawyer’s perspective to the discussion of judicial activism the decision has spawned between William, John, and E.D., arising in part due to Mr. Sullum and Mr. Whelan. To be sure, I think E.D. is wrong to the extent he argues that the Iowa decision is justified because it reaches a rights-enhancing, morally just result; William is exactly right in arguing that the process by which the Court reached its decision is more important than whether the result is just.

Politico: Defense cuts deepen old wounds...

It took a while for the magnitude of the cuts to sink in, but once it did, the ritualistic wailing from congressional leaders and defense contractors that always accompanies Pentagon budget-slashing began with unprecedented fury.

And that’s because the cuts proposed Monday by Defense Secretary Robert Gates — axing six major defense weapons systems, including missile programs, helicopters, fighter jets and a communications satellite — were themselves unprecedented. Or to borrow an Obama term, audacious.

[...] “I strongly support Secretary Gates’ decision to restructure a number of major defense programs,” McCain said. “It has long been necessary to shift spending away from weapon systems plagued by scheduling and cost overruns to ones that strike the correct balance between the needs of our deployed forces and the requirements for meeting the emerging threats of tomorrow.”

This is McCain's best area of expertise, so hopefully Congress can get some of that elusive bipartisanship going. Other Republicans don't seem very cooperative, however, preferring to milk "you're cutting defense!" for political points when from a cost-benefit standpoint many programs should be cut.

Yglesias: Praise for the New Defense Budget...

For more analysis on yesterday’s defense budget analysis see Robert Farley, Spencer Ackerman, Fred Kaplan, and James Fallows. All are impressed, and all rightly so.

This is the move that justifies the decision to keep Robert Gates on at the Pentagon. Any new Defense Secretary, no matter how brilliant, would have had to have spent his first three months in office building relationships with the top military commanders and focusing on filling out the DOD civilian staff. Only a Secretary who’s already been in office could have the ability to propose sweeping change. But only a president who’s brand new could have the popularity and honeymoon effect necessary to have any hope of driving the changes through congress. Hence the appeal of the odd alignment of new president and old defense secretary.

Mark Lynch: Obama scores again, but the game is just starting...

Obama's speech in Turkey's Parliament has gotten heavy coverage and rave reviews across the Arab political spectrum. Even influential newspapers and personalities who are usually quite critical of American foreign policy have expressed frank admiration. Despite the disarray in the public diplomacy bureaucracy (where there is still no nominee for the Under-Secretary of State), I would say that Obama has already succeeded at the initial public diplomacy phase of his effort to transform America's relations with the Muslim world. And he's not done -- I'm fairly sure that despite the fact that he has lived up to his promise to give a major address from a Muslim capital, this was not even "the" speech to the Muslim world that he promised during his campaign. But now will come the real challenge: transforming the words into deeds and delivering on the promise.

Obama has conquered Europe? Video of town hall in Turkey

Overcoming Bias: occupational licensing sucks.

Digg: Man commits suicide while watching Watchmen...come on, it wasn't that bad, was it?

Gay comedy: SNL, Fast & Furious ...and this:

Numders R fun

From Crooked Timber, "An excerpt from my daughter’s math homework"...



The last is a perfectly true answer to that question...

The 'd' reminds me of bash.org #330261:

<i8b4uUnderground> d-_-b
<BonyNoMore> how u make that inverted b?
<BonyNoMore> wait
<BonyNoMore> never mind

"Dead Aid" podcast with Dambisa Moyo

Earlier:

• Emotion and pity vs. logic and evidence?
• Guernica interview with Dambisa Moyo
• If the world had 100 people...

Link blag

The Post: Short '06 Lebanon War Stokes Pentagon Debate...

A war that ended three years ago and involved not a single U.S. soldier has become the subject of an increasingly heated debate inside the Pentagon, one that could alter how the U.S. military fights in the future.

When Israel and Hezbollah battled for more than a month in Lebanon in the summer of 2006, the result was widely seen as a disaster for the Israeli military. Soon after the fighting ended, some military officers began to warn that the short, bloody and relatively conventional battle foreshadowed how future enemies of the United States might fight.

Drezner: 13 Unexpected Consequences of the Financial Crisis...

7. Skirts will get longer. Here’s a piece of Wall Street folk wisdom: There is a rough correlation between bull markets and bare knees. During boom times, skirts get shorter. In these bearish times, prepare for hemlines to head south. Somewhat in relation, we’ll see something else go north: the age and weight of Playboy centerfolds. Evolutionary biology encourages people to seek “more mature” mates during times of economic insecurity, argue Terry F. Pettijohn and Brian J. Jungeberg in one of the more interesting studies published recently in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. To support their claim, the researchers showed that during recessions, centerfolds get older and, well, rounder. Similar studies have confirmed an identical trend in movie comedies—male and female leads get older during recessions.

Unreligious Right: Another Strange Poll...

Sixty-five percent of conservative Republicans have an unfavorable view of Islam. I'm surprised it's not higher. But what about liberal Democrats? Sixty percent of them have a favorable view of Islam. Really, 60% have a positive view of Islam. Is it any wonder liberals are so clueless? What causes this favorable view? Simple ignorance? Living in a dream world? Blaming problems involving Islam on the U.S.?

FiveThirtyEight: Whigs, Federalists Strongly Differ on Support for Obama...

[..] measurements of the partisan split in support for the President, as Pew Research has done here (they found a record partisan split in Obama's approval ratings, with 88 percent of Democrats but just 27 percent of Republicans approving of Obama's performance) are not quite as straightforward as they might seem. This is because partisan identification is at least somewhat fluid. The Republicans, in particular, have lost quite a bit of support over the past several years; those persons who continue to identify as Republicans are a hardened -- and very conservative -- lot. Just 24 percent of voters identified as Republican when Pew conducted this survey in March, which is roughly as low as that total has ever gotten.

Radley reminds you that libertarian free market proponents are not corporate apologists:

The U.S. Chamber has released its rankings of “business-friendly” members of Congress. Next time someone accuses libertarians and other free market proponents of being corporate apologists, send them this Tim Carney analysis of the Chamber’s list. Ron Paul, for example, scored lower than 90 percent of the Democrats in the House. Pro-free market, anti-tax Republicans scored lower than left-liberal Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. When you look at the issues the Chamber considers pro-business, it pretty quickly demolishes the notion that free markets and big business have much of anything to do with one another.

Why did the housing crash ruin the financial system while the dot-com collapse did not? WSJ has a longish article by a 2002 Noble laureate.

NewMajority tells Wall Street Bankers how to be capitalists.

It's not often I get to say this, but The Weekly Standard's budget recommendations are better than both Obama's and the House GOP's. Apart from defense spending, of course, where they're as nuts as ever.

TMV rounds up opinions on Obama's European tour.

NY Gov. Paterson is toast, voters say 63-22 he does not deserve election to full term.

Farm subsidies won't be cut? Fraking bastards.

The next Alien vs. Predator?

Police in Detroit break up pillow fight. NYC has better luck.

End Aid, save Africa, ctd.

Guernica has a long interview with Dambisa Moyo, the African development expert who has seen the foreign aid machine from positions at the World Bank and Goldman Sachs and thinks the best thing for Africa is to cut it off. Some quotes:

Despite a deluge of aid between the years of 1970 and 1998, poverty on the continent skyrocketed from 11 percent of the population to 66 percent, which means over six hundred million Africans are now impoverished.....Dambisa Moyo is a unique voice in the debate over African aid. In a conversation dominated by white, male westerners—and most conspicuously by celebrities such as Bono or Bob Geldoff—Moyo is a black, African woman....Moyo earned her master’s from Harvard and a Ph.D. in Economics at Oxford. She’s worked as a consultant to the World Bank, and for the past eight years was the sub-Saharan economic expert for Goldman Sachs. It was at Goldman Sachs that Moyo began work on her book, Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is A Better Way for Africa, just a few weeks ago

[...] Systematic western aid, Moyo argues in Dead Aid, has essentially turned Africa into one giant welfare state. The unending stream of money has created a situation where governments aren’t accountable to their citizens: since they don’t depend on tax revenue, leaders don’t think they owe their people anything—and the people don’t expect anything from their leaders. Moreover, says Moyo, since the money flows virtually no matter what, tyrants like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe (three hundred million dollars in foreign aid was sent to Mugabe in 2006 alone, says Moyo) often pilfer it and buy foreign goods, or stow it in foreign bank accounts where it does nothing to help the country. Furthermore, aid stamps out entrepreneurship. Moyo offers the example of an African mosquito net maker. When aid arrives in the form of a hundred thousand mosquito nets, the net-maker is out of business, and one hundred and sixty people (employees and dependents) are now aid-dependent. This, she says, is not a sustainable model.

[...] I think it’s quite bizarre frankly, and slightly laughable, when I hear people say “Oh, the book is controversial.” My view is that it’s hardly controversial; it’s very obvious...I think we all know that aid is not working. That’s why in the book I draw on literature from organizations like the World Bank. It’s somewhat bizarre that all this evidence is out there [that aid doesn’t work], but somehow we just continue to push for more. Let’s take the capitalistic system for a second. It’s quote, unquote, not working now. We have centuries of evidence that it generates wealth and delivers jobs, and yet here we are after one bad year and we’re ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater. So I find it quite worrying that we can look at aid—after sixty years and one trillion dollars that haven’t worked in Africa—and we still don’t question the system....

[...] I went to Kenya for the first time and visited the largest slum in Africa. It’s got about 1.2 million people living in it, and it’s been there since 1918. Frankly, it’s a perfect representation of the aid model. The UN for Habitat is right next door, yet this slum is spiraling out of control. It’s got no clean running water; it’s got nothing. It’s a direct example where they could have gone in and shown that aid works, but the slum is still there....In my experience—growing up in Africa and being an academic who went back to the continent and whose family still lives there—I have seen no evidence that aid is delivering a foundation that could ensure long-term sustainable growth and alleviate poverty

[...] I think the whole aid model is couched in pity. I don’t want to cast aspersions as to where that pity comes from. But I do think it’s based on pity because based on logic and evidence, it is very clear that aid does not work. And yet if you speak to some of the biggest supporters of aid, whether they are academics or policy makers or celebrities, their whole rationale for giving more aid to Africa is not couched in logic or evidence; it’s based largely on emotion and pity....

[...] having an open-ended commitment for long-term development and long-term aid is not acceptable. In sixty years, we’ve had over one trillion dollars in aid go to Africa. It needs to stop. So if somebody comes to me and says, “Listen, we think that your five-year program is a bit aggressive, why don’t we make it ten years?” I’m up for a debate on that. What I don’t want is for people to say “Oh, her book is so controversial,” and then they put it aside and continue to perpetuate a long-term, open-ended cycle of aid. I don’t want to raise my children on a continent that continues to spiral downward

[...] There is an incentive structure for the donors, and African countries know this. They know that the World Bank can only survive if it’s spending money. So when the conditionalities are not met, the aid continues to flow anyway....The World Bank discouraged Ghana from going to the capital markets to raise money because it wanted to keep the aid flowing. We’ve seen situations where, in order to keep the system going, the World Bank has lent to countries just so they could pay off old debts. A friend of mine had a great quote: “Africa is to the development industry what Mars is to NASA.” NASA spends billions on a MARS project, but they don’t really think we’re going there. Same with aid. Billions are spent, but no one really thinks it’s going to develop Africa. It’s kind of a scam.

Read the whole thing. (ht reason)

Free speech for terrorist sympathizers!

Yesterday I wrote "Free speech means defending the vile" and compared it to protecting the rights of terrorists and other criminals to due process.

As it turns out we can almost do both at the same time. Here is the first U.S. Based Pro-al Qaeda Magazine:


(meme) The Jawa Report:

It's called Jihad Recollections and is a production of Charlotte, NC al Qaeda supporter Samir Khan's self-styled jihad media company, as-Fursan. You can download a PDF version at the links provided by Sammy here.

The magazine is 70 pages of the same kind of garbage that you'd expect from al Qaeda itself, and certainly not from an American living in North Carolina. It seems to be imitating several other jihad magazines, which started with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's Voice of Jihad.

In addition to links to al Qaeda produced videos all within a clear context of support (note to Sammy: many of your links don't work. Better luck embedding them next time) It includes two English feature length articles by al Qaeda's #1 and #2: Four Practical Steps to Expand the Global Jihad, by Osama bin Laden, and Have We Forgotten Who Is America?, by Ayman al-Zawahiri and Nasir al-Fahd.

Another article is a translation of an al-Qaeda produced video extolling the virtues of former operational leader Abu Laith al-Libi.

There's some fairly laughable poetry, articles about getting in shape (do I look fat in this bomb belt?), what appear to be advertisements but are really links to al Qaeda videos and sermons by the likes of American jihad supporter living in exile Anwar al-Awlaki.

Sammy's authors also warn Muslims in the West not to integrate and there is even an article predicting that Islam will one day conquer Rome. Don't worry, the author seems to mention Rome only metaphorically. In fact, by Rome he seems to mean either Saudi Arabia or the United States (Yes, it's that poorly written and is filled with the quotes from Osama bin Laden and an odd assortment of conspiracy theorists.)

The most worrisome articles, though, aren't the two aimed at teaching wanna-be terrorists about the technologies behind EMP and night-vision --- even though we are told that "through war booty, we can expect to see more mujahideen using night vision in their strategies." No, I think the most worrisome article is one entitled Principles of Guerrilla Warfare.

Clearly the point of the magazine is to gain sympathy for al Qaeda, the Taliban, Shabaab, and any other violent Islamist terrorist organizations (except, of course, Shia terrorists who Sammy claims are murtadeen [apostates]).

I'm not sure what allowing the likes of Samir Khan --- and whoever his coauthors are --- to vocally support the enemies of the United States and to incite others during a shooting war to lend support to those enemies [note, though, that while Samir encourages others to go off and fight the kaffir Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan -- reminding Muslims of the personal obligation of jihad -- that he conveniently writes this from an affluent suburban Charlotte home from the comfort of mommy and daddy's basement] says about where our country has gone?

Seems to me it says our country is still here, still operating under the first amendment. We allowed people to disseminate information on how to make explosives or enemy propaganda during other periods.

But I especially like how they had room to question Obama's economic stimulus package. That's a real doozy.

Update: Some info from Wikipedia:

In the landmark decision of Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969), which expressly overruled Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927) (a case in which a woman was imprisoned for aiding the Communist Party), the Supreme Court referred to the right to speak freely of violent action and revolution in broad terms:

[Our] decisions have fashioned the principle that the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.

Link blag

The Post: Gates Planning Major Changes In Programs, Defense Budget...

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is expected to announce on Monday the restructuring of several dozen major defense programs as part of the Obama administration's bid to shift military spending from preparations for large-scale war against traditional rivals to the counterinsurgency programs that Gates and others consider likely to dominate U.S. conflicts in coming decades.

Gates's aides say his plan would boost spending for some programs and take large whacks at others, including some with powerful constituencies on Capitol Hill and among influential contractors, making his announcement more of an opening bid than a decisive end to weeks of sometimes acrimonious internal Pentagon debate.

Yglesias: European aid to Afghanistan...

Obama’s haul looks pretty modest—about 3,000 extra troops to provide election-related security plus about 2,000 troops to do embedded police trading, plus $100 million more for training and $500 million more for humanitarian aid. Still I’d say the negative tone of the press coverage suggests the perils of expectations more than anything else. The Bush administration has been trying to get more out of the Europeans for years and failing. Obama tried and he’s got something.

[...] the real time to ask for additional European support in Afghanistan would have been 2002 and 2003 when many countries were eager to cooperate with the United States. Instead, the Bush administration leaned on America’s best friends in Europe and around the world to contribute tens of thousands of soldiers to Iraq.

NYT: Liberty, Equality, Envy...

The feeling in Europe, and especially in France, about Barack Obama’s presidency is as clear as day: we are envious.

The Reality-Based Community:

A. A. Gill reports from London that "Mr. Obama is the only popular politician left iin the world. He could win an election in any of the G-20 countries, and his fellow world leaders will do anything to take home a touch of that reflected popularity."

If that's true, it's a substantial foreign-policy advantage.

The Post: The Radicalization of Ben Bernanke...

Timothy Geithner and his predecessor Henry Paulson have been the public faces of the U.S. government's battle against the global economic crisis. But even as the secretaries of the Treasury have garnered the headlines -- as well as popular anger surrounding bank bailouts and corporate bonuses -- another official has quickly amassed great influence by committing trillions of dollars to keep markets afloat, radically redefining his institution and taking on serious risks as he seeks to rescue the American economy. Without a doubt, this crisis is now Ben Bernanke's war.

And why are Asian kids so good at math? Curiouser and curiouser

Bush is not bowing

Little Green Footballs claims this is an instance of Bush bowing like Obama did, and the post made memeorandum.

But this is not a bow, Bush is actually receiving a medallion in the source video.

French town hall

The applause at closing Guantanamo and not torturing is pretty gratifying. There was a time when America held the moral high ground and could deliver "tear down this wall"-style speeches to real, positive effect. Are we getting our groove back?

BBC poll from January:

Government picking winners and losers

TheNextTwitter

(via Viral Video Chart)

Why legalization is gaining momentum

Five weeks ago Nate produced this chart:


I've been trying to find good demographics of usage, and he's delivered:

The peak time for pot usage occurs at or about age 20 -- a period known to most of us as "college" -- before declining fairly rapidly throughout one's 20s and then plateauing from roughly age 30 through age 50.

More important to the policy debate, however, may be the fraction of adults who have used marijuana at any point in their lifetimes. This is a dual-peaked distribution, with one peak occurring among adults who are roughly age 50 now, and would have come of age in the 1970s, and another among adults in their early 20s. Generation X, meanwhile, in spite of its reputation for slackertude, were somewhat less eager consumers of pot than the generations either immediately preceding or proceeding them.

The key feature of this distribution is how rapidly lifetime usage rates decline after about age 55 or so. About half of 55-year-olds have used marijuana at some point in their lives, but only about 20 percent of 65-year-olds have.

There is not, of course, a one-to-one correspondence between having used marijuana and supporting its legalization; one can plausibly support its legalization without having ever inhaled, or vice versa. Nevertheless, I would venture that the correlation is fairly strong, and polls have generally found a fairly strong generation gap when it comes to pot legalization.

From that link:

There is a huge generation gap on this issue. More adults under 45 (49%) approve of legalizing marijuana use than oppose (45%), while just 31% of adults over age 45 approve of it; six in 10 are opposed.

Nate continues:

As members of the Silent Generation are replaced in the electorate by younger voters, who are more likely to have either smoked marijuana themselves or been around those that have, support for legalization is likely to continue to gain momentum.

Put less delicately: as with support for things like gay marriage, it's a matter of waiting for more bigoted geezers to die.

The silliness of culture warriors

Dave puts it in dialog form:

Joe: I would like to do X, which is something that doesn’t harm anyone else.

Dick: Yeah, but I don’t like you doing X. It just bothers me. Therefore I’m going to force you to stop.

Joe: But doing X violates no one’s rights.

Dick: Radical nihilist back-slapping liberaltarian! The right of my majority to self-govern over you trumps your right to do X!  Besides, not only do I see no Right to X in the Constitution but polling data suggests only a minority supports your position so you’re wrong!

Judge Bill: Um, Dick, I’m sorry, since you provided no legally plausible reason why Joe can not do X if he wants do to X, you don’t have the right to interfere with Joe if he wants to do X. 

Dick: Aaargh! Unelected activist nihilist judges taking away my freedom! Help! Help! I’m being repressed!  To the barricades!

Free speech means defending the vile

Via the Adam Smith blog, L'Ombre de l'Olivier:

There are a lot of people who claim to support free speech but tend to qualify it with weasel words about "harming children" or "offending minorities" or other blather which boils down to not supporting free speech at all. [..] Supporting free speech means you don't want to prohibit people saying things like:

• Mohammed was a paedophile
• Niggers are stupid
• The only problem with Hitler was that he didn't finish the job
• Homosexuals should be hung from the lamposts
• It isn't rape if you screw your daughter
  
• The chinks kidnap cats and dogs to make food for their restaurants

[..] Of course no government ought mandate any of these as education or pass laws in favour of any (hello Iran) but any government that believes in liberty for its citizens will not attempt to censor people who say these things or anything else.

This is an important point I don't think enough people fully understand.  Once you start making exceptions to free speech, it's no longer free.

Defending the right to vile speech is similar to how criminal defense lawyers will tell you that "by defending the guilty we protect the innocent". Both are important, because if you allow the state to ban vile speech or convict guilty without due process, inevitably it will infringe on legitimate speech and the rights of the innocent to defend themselves.

And this is part of why some of us are so concerned with the rights of terrorists and illegal aliens, for example. If you eliminate due process for anyone, it puts everyone else's rights at risk as well.

Because without due process, who gets to decide whether someone is being legitimately detained?   Hence, the habeus writ.

Without protecting all speech, who gets to decide whether some speech is too vile?  Hence, total freedom of speech.

On a related note, the Economist has a good piece explaining why freedom of speech must include the right to defame religion, contra the recent U.N. resolution

Etymological note

I also think of it as blah blah blah...blag

Respect people, not beliefs

Bloc Raisonneur: "This video, part of the One Law For All campaign in the UK, cannot be shown and distributed enough."


I couldn't agree more. This idea that civil courts should judge Muslims, Christians, and others by the rules of their religion rather than uniform civil laws is patently absurd.

What has happened to secularism in Europe?

Well, when you put it that way

Via Frum, WSJ:

A lawyer in Spain -- who did his legal studies while serving over seven years in prison for kidnapping and terrorism -- has engineered a complaint accusing the U.S. government of systematically torturing war-on-terrorism detainees. He filed this complaint with Baltasar Garzon, an activist magistrate famous for championing the "universal jurisdiction" of Spanish courts. That magistrate is now asking a Spanish prosecutor to bring criminal charges on this matter against former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, four other former Bush administration lawyers, and me.

The allegation is not that any of us tortured anyone. And it is not that any of us even directed anyone to commit torture. The allegation is that, when we advised President George W. Bush on the Geneva Conventions and detainee interrogations, our interpretations were wrong -- in the view of the disapproving Spaniards. According to the complaint, these wrong interpretations encouraged the president to make decisions that led to torture.

The Spanish magistrate apparently believes that it can be a crime for American officials to offer the wrong kind of advice to a president of the United States and, furthermore, it can be a crime punishable by a Spanish court.

...it does seem rather ridiculous. As much as I fear what these Bush lawyers did was atrocious, we should release the memos and set up a truth commission before calling an inquisition. May cooler heads prevail.

Photo of the day

FLOTUS Michelle Obama and fellow spouses of NATO Summit leaders tour Notre Dame —the cathedral, not the university— spreading their anti-Catholic values.

Library Grape notes that this uppity America-hating angry negro lady now living in public housing is nonetheless pretty popular right now:

Europe loves her, too. On a lighter note:

Fisking the Republicanist id

2004 Map of Jesusland, featuring Alberta.

Leigh Patrick Sullivan lives in Alberta, but that doesn't stop him from having a conversation with the Gipper:

Ronald Reagan: Hello my friend. I’m glad you could join me today.
Moderate Seperatist: Mr. President! It is an honor, sir!
RR: Please, call me Ron. Care for something?
MS: No sir, I’m fine. What brings you here?
RR: Actually, you came to me. I’m glad, since I’d like to find out how things are back home.
MS: Sure. First, the wars.
RR: The Soviets are back?
MS: No, sir…well, kind of, but…
RR: Then who?
MS: You know of the 9/11 attacks…

[First things first, have to make sure we're on the same page]

RR: Of course.
MS: …and that America sent troops into Afghanistan and Iraq…
RR: Yes. How is that going? Have we won yet?

At least he didn't ask if we were "winning", with no particular end in sight...

MS: Well, sir, we are winning in Iraq. Not that the American people would know that, given the lack of media coverage.

Had to answer with the "winning", though. The "winning" will continue!

RR: Same old media, I see. America starts winning and they clam up.
MS: Yes sir.

Republicanism 101: always blame the free press

...As far as Afghanistan, the American and Allied forces have been engaged in some tough slugging, but we are hopeful.
RR: Excellent news! The president is putting that effort at the forefront, I assume.
MS: Well, President Obama – the first Black president, by the way - has announced an increase in forces, but it’s less than what military experts say is needed.
RR: I know Afghanistan well. The Soviets were in tough back in the day.
MS: Yes, and with the enemy being religious zealots, it isn’t any easier for us now.
RR: As I said to The Duke the other day, Americans always rise up to a challenge, but it will ultimately be up to the Afghani people to determine their own destiny, just like the Eastern Europeans trapped behind the Iron Curtain did.
MS: That’s my thinking. Switching to the economy…
RR: I assume that after I left things continued to be stable for America.
MS: Actually, Mr. Pres..um, Ron, we are in the middle of some real trouble right now.
RR: Really? What’s going on?
MS: There is a global recession going on. Unemployment is skyrocketing, businesses are suffering, the dollar is treading water, there’s talk of a global currency….

We surely can't let an opportunity to spread discredited conspiracy theories to a dead president go to waste!

RR: Good Lord! Tell me Obama is a Republican.
MS: No, sir. A Democrat. A leftwing Democrat, actually.
RR: (sighs) I warned them. Go on.
MS: President Obama came into office on the promise to fix the situation and save not only jobs, but the American way of life.
RR: Well, that’s good! Tell me, what steps has he taken? Cutting taxes, increasing trade, and cutting the fat, I assume.

Had to figure the Gipper himself would be stuck in the eighties

MS: …um, not really. First, he pushed through a $700+ billion bailout package…
RR: That’s a good one. Very funny!
MS: It’s not a joke, Ron.
RR: What a horrible move. Tell me that there were checks and balances in place to make sure the money was used properly.
MS: Actually, the public went ballistic when it was revealed that one of the recipients, AIG, used the money for executive bonuses.

Three cheers for irrational populist prejudice

RR: Unbelievable. What did they think was going to happen?
MS: Then there’s the little matter of the automakers.
RR: I assume they are feeling the heat from the downturn.
MS: Yes, sir. GM and Chrysler had restructuring plans, and both were rejected by the President.
RR: …and so he instructed the CEO’s to come back with a better plan, yes?
MS: Sort of. He demanded that GM’s CEO be fired.
RR: So who’s running General Motors?
MS: The President.
RR: You have a horrible sense of humor.
MS: I wish it was a joke, sir.
RR: Are you telling me that the American government is now in the business of being in business?
MS: It looks that way.

Here we agree, but the restructuring will continue!

RR: I don’t believe it. America is transforming into a socialist state.
MS: That’s the fear, Ron.

Yes, that's the fear.  Now how about the reality?

RR: I’m glad I didn’t live to see that.
MS: There is hope, however.
RR: The American people!
MS: Yes sir. A phenomenon is occurring. The economic situation and the subsequent bailouts, along with a wave of mistrust in the government, has spawned groups of Americans to hold Tea Parties across the land.

Too bad nobody cares

RR: I’m not surprised. If there is one lasting, unbreakable strength, it is the spirit of the American people. You must be proud!
MS: Absolutely! Of course, I’m a Canadian….
RR: So you know all about the dangers of socialism, then.
MS: All too well, Ron.
RR: Have you attempted to warn your American friends?
MS: I try, Ron. I try. But, as you often said, sometimes I feel that I am speaking to ears that won’t listen.

Gee, I wonder why?

Link blag

In a statement, the White House tries to thread the needle on Iowa:

"The President respects the decision of the Iowa Supreme Court, and continues to believe that states should make their own decisions when it comes to the issue of marriage. Although President Obama supports civil unions rather than same-sex marriage, he believes that committed gay and lesbian couples should receive equal rights under the law."

Drezner:

[...] On style, Obama does get an A-. I loved this bit from Helene Cooper's NYT story: "In a rare show of emotion from the international press, many in the room stood up and cheered after Mr. Obama was done [with his press conference]." C'mon, an American was on the global stage and not one shoe was thrown? Man, times have changed. Meawhile, as for Michelle Obama, there's this priceless AP quote from a Buckingham Palace spokesman: "We don't issue instructions on not touching the queen."

WSJ: U.S to Lift Some Cuba Travel Curbs...

President Barack Obama plans to lift longstanding U.S. restrictions on Cuba, a senior administration official said, allowing Cuban-Americans to visit families there as often as they like and to send them unlimited funds.

The gesture, which could herald more openness with the Castro regime, will fulfill a campaign promise and follows more modest action in Congress this year to loosen travel rules.

reason: Too Crazy to Fail...

The dynamic duo of global finance, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan jefe Hugo Chavez, cut the ribbon on the Iran-Venezuela Joint Bank today. Speaking in Tehran, Chavez spoke of his economic model: "Capitalism needs to go down. It has to end. And we must take a transitional road to a new model that we call socialism."

David Frum: Obama's formula for disaster...

[...] In these and so many other ways, President Obama is building an economy for the 21st century of accreting waste and inefficiency, massive bureaucracy, slower productivity growth, and lagging prosperity.

I don’t blame him for borrowing the money to blast the U.S. and world economies out of their current rut. I blame him for accompanying his borrowing with a slew of long- discredited statist interventions. These will hugely burden those future Americans who inherit the job of paying off his debt.

I second that.

Obama answers question about America's standing in the world (video)

Mint.com: A visual guide to inflation

Wal-Mart deserves a Nobel peace prize?

CNET gets a look inside Google's servers, which all have their own 12V UPS battery! They've come a long way since 1998.

Rocketboom: If time was infinite and space was finite... (video)

Statistical religious bigotry [updated]

Nate Silver crunches some numbers:

Marriage bans [are] losing ground at a rate of slightly less than 2 points per year. So, for example, we'd project that a state in which a marriage ban passed with 60 percent of the vote last year would only have 58 percent of its voters approve the ban this year.

So not only does the arc of the universe bend towards justice, but we can measure the degree of that bend... here's the methodology:

I looked at the 30 instances in which a state has attempted to pass a constitutional ban on gay marriage by voter initiative. The list includes Arizona twice, which voted on different versions of such an amendment in 2006 and 2008, and excludes Hawaii, which voted to permit the legislature to ban gay marriage but did not actually alter the state's constitution. I then built a regression model that looked at a series of political and demographic variables in each of these states and attempted to predict the percentage of the vote that the marriage ban would receive.

It turns out that you can build a very effective model by including just three variables:

1. The year in which the amendment was voted upon;
2. The percentage of adults in 2008 Gallup tracking surveys who said that religion was an important part of their daily lives;
3. The percentage of white evangelicals in the state.

These variables collectively account for about three-quarters of the variance in the performance of marriage bans in different states. The model predicts, for example, that a marriage ban in California in 2008 would have passed with 52.1 percent of the vote, almost exactly the fraction actually received by Proposition 8.

Unsurprisingly, there is a very strong correspondence between the religiosity of a state and its propensity to ban gay marriage, with a particular "bonus" effect depending on the number of white evangelicals in the state.

[...] All of the other variables that I looked at -- race, education levels, party registration, etc. -- either did not appear to matter at all, or became redundant once we accounted for religiosity. Nor does it appear to make a significant difference whether the ban affected marriage only, or both marriage and civil unions.

Inside the Christianist mind

I recently spoke with someone who is very unhappy with the Iowa ruling. He is a white evangelical whose religion is certainly a very important part of his daily life. So anecdotally I knew this correspondence was true, but it's good to know it holds up statistically.

Update: In an effort to help him out, I sent a link to a post by hilzoy which I think does a great job of explaining how to be a Christian in a secular world. His response? ...

You have missed it again! And you will continue to miss it. This policy will set up a nazi like behavior towards Christians and other religious groups. We never killed gays or imprisoned them for private behavior but this will now move step by step to deny religious freedom. It will move to jail and finally planned extermination. One right of both Christians and probably other groups as well will be taken away. It will start that we can't discriminate against gays and then it will move for other reasons that seem logical to the secular mind. It isn't a gay thing but rather it is a light versus darkness thing. It started in earnest in the Thirties and it has continued. Abortion was a baby step and this will be another in its plan. We will be discriminated against continually like the last 40 years and it will get worse. This is a collision course towards the policies of the Roman Empire and the Communist era of Stalin. But behind it all is not a human face or agenda. You can't see it because you have lost yourself in this world's agenda and are now blind.

Sometimes the fundamentalist paranoia of white evangelicals really shines bright, no?

End aid, save Africa

Overcoming Bias:

Dambisa Moyo, an African economist, has joined her voice to the other African economists [e.g. James Shikwati] calling for a full halt to Western aid. Her book is called Dead Aid and it asserts a direct cause-and-effect relationship between $1 trillion of aid and the rise in African poverty rates from 11% to 66%.

Though it's an easy enough signal to fake, I find it noteworthy that Moyo - in this interview at least - repeatedly pleads for some attention to "logic and evidence":

"I think the whole aid model is couched in pity. I don’t want to cast aspersions as to where that pity comes from. But I do think it’s based on pity because based on logic and evidence, it is very clear that aid does not work. And yet if you speak to some of the biggest supporters of aid, whether they are academics or policy makers or celebrities, their whole rationale for giving more aid to Africa is not couched in logic or evidence; it’s based largely on emotion and pity."

I was just trying to think of when was the last time I heard a Western politician - or even a mainstream Western economist in any public venue - draw an outright battle line between logic and pity. Oh, there are plenty of demagogues who claim the evidence is on their side, but they won't be so outright condemning of emotion - it's not a winning tactic. Even I avoid drawing a battle line so stark.

Moyo says she's gotten a better reception in Africa than in the West. Maybe you need to see your whole continent wrecked by emotion and pity before "logic and evidence" start to sound appealing.

Who could have predicted welfare for countries is as harmful as that for corporations and people?

Sigh. Ain't it always the same—by the time people will listen to we stoicly pitiless libertarians and our "logic and evidence", the damage is done.

Update: Excerpts from an interview with Moyo

(earlier: If the world had 100 people)

Always face Des Moines?

TPM guffaws:

Rep. Steve King (R-IA): We must act immediately "so that Iowa does not become the gay marriage Mecca due to the Supreme Court's latest experiment in social engineering."