Miss Universe: "Gitmo is a Looooot of Fun!"

Huffington Post reports that Miss Universe did a USAO tour at Gitmo and was really impressed!

This week, Guantánamo!!! It was an incredible experience...All the guys from the Army were amazing with us. We visited the Detainees camps and we saw the jails, where they shower, how the recreate themselves with movies, classes of art, books. It was very interesting. We took a ride with the Marines around the land to see the division of Gitmo and Cuba while they were informed us with a little bit of history.

Sun-Times Files for Bankruptcy

The Chicago Sun-Times just filed for Chapter 11.

Can I Just Post This Picture?

Of Moammar Qaddafi

Iraq Unravelling

MUST READ: Tom Rick's FP post on serious grumblings in Iraq which make him ponder: "What should I say the next time someone asks me whether the Surge 'worked'"

Anyone who tells you that the Iraq war is over should be forced to memorize this paragraph from the Sunday edition of the Washington Post:

As Apache helicopter gunships cruised above Baghdad's Fadhil neighborhood, former Sunni insurgents fought from rooftops and street corners against American and Iraqi forces, according to witnesses, the Iraqi military and police. At least 15 people were wounded in the gunfights, which lasted several hours. By nightfall, the street fighters had taken five Iraqi soldiers hostage.

That is Iraq 2009. Does it sound peaceful to you? Does it seem like the political questions vexing Iraq have been solved?

Here is a quote of the day:

If they don't release Adil Mashadani, all the Awakening in Iraq will rise up like our uprising today," he [a local Awakening Council spokesman] added."

Buyer Beware

...Regarding the new USDA regs on labeling food "Natural."

Our point was that the conditions in which an animal is raised are central to the question of whether or not its meat is natural. A few weeks ago, the USDA released a draft of its new rules relating to meat labeling. The new rules require that meat called natural not be fed antibiotics or meat by-products. This is good but really just scratches the surface. Unfortunately, as previously, the rules are silent on the conditions in which animals are raised. We are not surprised, but we are nonetheless disappointed. This means the USDA will continue to allow factory-farmed meat to be labeled as "natural." Buyer beware.

Gettysburg: An Unknown Soldier

Errol Morris (Documentary director of Fog of War and Standard Operating Procedure) has a 5-part series in this weeks' NYT on this photograph - found clutched in the hands of an unidentified Union soldier at Gettysburg - and how it was used to identify the man ... and why that's important.

Keep following the daily installments.

Coping With Gen-Y

(via Syd O) A good article in Slate on how Generation-Y is having to re-evaluate all the things they were taught to expect:

Since twentysomethings are often accused of whining, let me say that the e-mails in my inbox don't do that. They are about scrambling to make sense of changed, and reduced, expectations and are not filled with self-pity, or at least not of the maudlin, unjustified sort. Generation Y has a pretty good argument for being the worst off right now. They may not have kids and significant family responsibilities and bills yet. But along with their school debt, they have a lot of loss to contend with as they peer forward into the uncertainty ahead.

... Last week I talked to a 26-year-old named Candice who lives in North Carolina. She'd written to say that she can't pay for therapy for her depression anymore because she has no job and absolutely no money. ("I have some spare change that I keep in a change purse in my dresser," she writes.) In August, Candice graduated from James Madison University with a master's degree in English. She is the first person in her immediate family to go to college. She wants to get a Ph.D. in literature and women's studies, to study the works of Margaret Atwood. But she can't afford to. Her parents, meanwhile, are having trouble understanding why she can't find work after months of searching. They're both ill and have to spend heavily for prescription medications. It is all an enormous, hopeless-feeling strain.

No wonder ... who in the world is Margaret Atwood? Cry me a river ... I love the humanities, but give me a break. Like Syd O said, it reminds me of Steve Carell in Little Miss Sunshine who's the 2nd most famous Proust scholar.

Kr[ooo]gman

(via VH1) Newsweek has a cover story on Paul Krugman as the left flank attacking truth to power intellectual outsider guy.

Here's his latest column, from today.

Toons

The Takeover

Matt Taibbi has a great piece in Rolling Stone on the financial crisis - mostly about how AIG exploded then imploded, the people who made it possible, TARP and the Fed, Paulson, the bailout, and everything else that's happened and how it all fits together. Really, you can't read enough of these articles to wrap your head around the complexity, hubris, and stupidity of the situation. Taibbi reads well - full of colloquialisms, swears and anger - all appropriately directed ...

How Much is a Trillion Dollars?

(via Megan McCardle)
"A trillion is, in some sense, a meaningless number. Perhaps this is a problem with inflation in both our currency and the size of our government--the spending figures are now beyond any normal person's imagining. In the comments to another thread, two readers try to put some emotional weight to these hefty numbers

Wiredog says:

A couple years ago someone asked me, as an aid to visualizing the budget, how many transport flights it would take to move $1T worth of $100 bills.

So $1T is 10B $100 bills.

10B grams is 10M kg

120,000 kg is the capacity of the C5 Galaxy aircraft. So it would take 84 flights to move $1T in $100 bills.

The Galaxy C5 is (she said with stunning understatement), not a small aircraft:

Meanwhile, Colonel Sanders notes:

Imagine you're given $1T on the day Jesus Christ was allegedly crucified.

You spend $1M per day, every day, 365 days a year without stopping for any reason.

As of today, you would still need around 700 years to be completely out of money.

Don't worry, though--I assume when you do run out, there will be a government program to top up your funds."

What Do Experts Really Know re: Politics

Read Nick Kristof today:

But do experts actually get it right themselves?

The expert on experts is Philip Tetlock, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His 2005 book, “Expert Political Judgment,” is based on two decades of tracking some 82,000 predictions by 284 experts. The experts’ forecasts were tracked both on the subjects of their specialties and on subjects that they knew little about.

The result? The predictions of experts were, on average, only a tiny bit better than random guesses — the equivalent of a chimpanzee throwing darts at a board.

“It made virtually no difference whether participants had doctorates, whether they were economists, political scientists, journalists or historians, whether they had policy experience or access to classified information, or whether they had logged many or few years of experience,” Mr. Tetlock wrote.

Indeed, the only consistent predictor was fame — and it was an inverse relationship. The more famous experts did worse than unknown ones.

My date rapist is on Facebook as a "person I might know"

Well, that lede caught my eye too. From Salon's "Dear Cary" section.

O'Reilly and Faux News

O'Reilly ambushed CAP blogger Amanda Terkel for his show. When O'Reilly was picked to keynote a rape victim charity fundraiser earlier this month, Terkel pointed out the irony of the choice based on the fact that O'Reilly had blamed rape victims before:

"Now Moore, Jennifer Moore, 18, on her way to college. She was 5-foot-2, 105 pounds, wearing a miniskirt and a halter top with a bare midriff. Now, again, there you go. So every predator in the world is gonna pick that up at two in the morning. She’s walking by herself on the West Side Highway, and she gets picked up by a thug. All right. Now she’s out of her mind, drunk."

So O'Reilly sent camera crews to stalk out her DC apartment and ambush her on vacation in Virginia (Terkel's description here), get an interview, and selectively edited it for tonight's show. (Video here).

Rawls' Old Time Religion

The Princeton religion department recently discovered in their library John Rawls' senior thesis: "A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith: An interpretation based on the concept of community." Although Rawls soon afterward abandoned his faith, the London Times has an excellent (although lengthy) piece by an NYU and a Standford philosophy professors detailing how Rawls' early religion informed his later, well-known, philosophy (i.e."justice as fairness") most famously found in A Theory of Justice (1971).

UPDATE: TNR has a piece on why Rawls' religion may explain some of his "inexplicable" views.

Who Will Buy Our Debt?

(via Gortyn) There was apparently a large drop in the markets today (but they rebounded) attributed to less than stellar debt auctions in the UK and here in the US. The UK sale totally bombed, and the US sale signaled a significant drop in demand for T-Bills. This is something to keep an eye on.

The U.K. government put $2.55 billion worth of 40-year "gilt" bonds up for sale and ended up with $100 million on their hands. It was the first time since 1995 that the Brits failed to sell all the notes offered at an auction. . . .Treasury offered $34 billion worth of five-year notes. Unlike in England, the U.S. sale had more customers than product available. . . .But the bid/cover ratio -- a measure of demand for the Treasuries, which compares the number of bids to the amount of securities sold -- fell from 2.21 at the last 5-year-note sale to 2.02 today. This signals weaker demand for Treasuries -- at least at the interest rates offered. . . .The U.S. and most other nations will try to spend their way out of this recession by raising money by selling debt, like today's auction of Treasuries. This is a fine plan -- as long as there is demand for the debt.

Geithner Plan, Will it Work?

Read this discussion over the Geithner plan between Krugman, DeLong, Johnson (MIT), and Thoma (Oregon) over at NYT.

Health Care and the Budget Process

Wonk Alert: If you're interested in the prospects for Health Care reform in the Congressional Budget, read Ezra and Jon Cohn. Then brush up on the Budget Reconciliation Process. In short, there's no specific Health Care dollars in either the House or Senate version (to avoid it being riddled by interest groups), Reconciliation is included in the House version but not the Senate version (which forces Senate Republicans to play ball or risk having reconciliation inserted in Conference and having health care rammed through with only 50 votes).

Also, here's what Congress Daily had to say about the Budget up on the hill today:

BIG PUSH. The governmental equivalent of a three-ring circus plays at the Capitol today, with the budget in the spotlight. In the center ring, President Obama meets for lunch with the Senate Democratic caucus. Meanwhile, the House and Senate Budget committees will offer their budget resolutions and, with them, the first detailed looks at changes they want to make in Obama's blueprint. Obama will push moderate Democrats to back his plan instead of stripping out such things as the middle-class tax cuts and the cap-and-trade emissions plan. OMB Director Orszag tried to downplay the differences, saying Obama's plan and the House and Senate budget resolutions are "98 percent the same." Or, as he put it in a conference call, "The resolutions may not be identical twins to what the president submitted, but they are certainly brothers that look an awful lot alike." But while Orszag tried to paint over the differences, Obama seemed eager to crank up the pressure on lawmakers! . In addition to today's meeting with Senate Democrats, he'll be back at the Capitol Monday to twist the arms of balking House Democrats.

Geithner/Obama Bank Bailout Plan

MUST READ: Don't understand it? Don't care to find out for yourself? Too complicated? I feel ya. So read Brad DeLong's helpful "Q&A".

Here's Noam.

Obama's Economic Brain Trust - It Ain't Pretty

John Heilemann has an in-depth piece in New York Magazine on the mess inside and in-fighting among Obama's economic advisors - and the extremely thin political tight rope the President must balance to pass his agenda. . . leave alone for now whether or not any of it will actually work!

Those Bonuses Really Stick in My Crawl

Ezra Klein captures my thoughts perfectly. I understand that the AIG bonuses are just .001% of the bailout money ... but it's still infuriating:

They should be begging for a shot at redemption. They should work without pay, without sleep, without credit. They should wear sackcloth and ashes. But more than that, they should be trying to help. The damage they wrought might have been unintentional, but that doesn't absolve them of responsibility for the aftermath. What we've got, however, is an economic hit-and-run, with one wrinkle: The collar-popper peeking out of the bloodied Porsche is willing to stick around if we pay him for his time. Give him a bonus and he'll dirty his hands with CPR.

Read the rest here.

Toon

White House Vegetable Garden

(via Syd O). This is great news - the NYT reports that the Obama's will be planting an organic vegetable garden on the White House lawn. Children from a local gradeschool will help prepare and plant the 1,100 sq/ft lot. They'll have 2 beehives for honey,will use compost and crab meal from the Chesapeake for fertilizer, and the White House chef will use food from the garden for his executive menu.

While the Clintons grew some vegetables in pots on the White House roof, the Obamas’ garden will far transcend that, with 55 varieties of vegetables — from a wish list of the kitchen staff — grown from organic seedlings started at the Executive Mansion’s greenhouses.

The Obamas will feed their love of Mexican food with cilantro, tomatillos and hot peppers. Lettuces will include red romaine, green oak leaf, butterhead, red leaf and galactic. There will be spinach, chard, collards and black kale. For desserts, there will be a patch of berries. And herbs will include some more unusual varieties, like anise hyssop and Thai basil. A White House carpenter, Charlie Brandts, who is a beekeeper, will tend two hives for honey.

The total cost of seeds, mulch and so forth is $200, said Sam Kass, an assistant White House chef, who prepared healthful meals for the Obama family in Chicago and is an advocate of local food. Mr. Kass will oversee the garden.

The plots will be in raised beds fertilized with White House compost, crab meal from the Chesapeake Bay, lime and green sand. Ladybugs and praying mantises will help control harmful bugs.

Cristeta Comerford, the White House’s executive chef, said she was eager to plan menus around the garden, and Bill Yosses, the pastry chef, said he was looking forward to berry season.

J-List

So I've come across this Politico story about JournoList in a few blogs. Apparently JournoList is a secret/off-the-record ListServe for liberal journalists, pundits, academics, bloggers, etc. that was started by Ezra Klein (btw, he's only 24!?!?!). The Politico and some conservatives are calling it the "Liberal Echo Chamber" and some are trying to talk up the "liberal media conspiracy theory" ... but for me, I just want to get in on it! Pretty much all my favorite guys seem to be on the list.

I still can't believe Ezra's only 24 - that's stupid.

Just Keep in Mind

The $165 Million in AIG bonuses is only 1/10 of 1% of AIG's total bailout money. But - the symbolism ...

Here's Mankiw's take.

Toon

Spaceman Africa

(via Marinade) Check out this bracket - for the "Name of the Year". The names are hilarious ... and real. Spaceman Africa won last year by beating out Destiny Frankenstein. This year's #1 seeds are: Taco Vandervelde, Calamity McEntire, Rev. Valentine Handwerker, and Iris Macadangdang

Sen. Grassley on AIG

(via VH1) Here's Chuck Grassley in a recent interview:

"I suggest, you know, obviously, maybe they ought to be removed," Grassley said. "But I would suggest the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them if they'd follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I'm sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide.

"And in the case of the Japanese, they usually commit suicide before they make any apology."

Equal Opportunity Porker

(via Syd O and Taxpayers for Common Sense) Refer to this Slate article the next time you hear Republicans harp on all the "pork" in the budget:

Here is a list of the Senate's 10 biggest earmark hogs, based on dollar amounts in the spending bill:

1. Thad Cochran, R-Miss.: $474 million
2. Roger Wicker, R-Miss.: $391 million
3. Mary Landrieu, D-La.: $332 million
4. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa: $292 million
5. David Vitter, R-La.: $249 million
6. Christopher Bond, R-Mo.: $248 million
7. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.: $235 million
8. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii: $225 million
9. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.: $219 million
10. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa: $199 million

Yup - 6 of the top 10 hale from the GOP

Happy Anniversary!

One year ago today, Bear Stearns was bought by JP Morgan for $2/share. And it was all downhill from there ...

Good Quote

(via Syd O) Concerning the intentional "greying" of the Climate Change debate by political detractors:

Don't expect the world to be fair. Read Mamet's "Bambi v. Godzilla", and in particular the section containing this line:

"In these fibbing competitions, the party actually wronged, the party with an actual practicable program, or possessing an actually beneficial product, is at a severe disadvantage; he is stuck with a position he cannot abandon, and, thus, cannot engage his talents for elaboration, distraction, drama and subterfuge."

Stewart v. Kramer Finale

Watch the video of Jim Kramer on the Daily Show here. It was really good - serious - not too awkward - something that needed to be done. I like both Kramer and Stewart, and I thought it was good for Kramer to come on the show, be humbled, and take the grilling that he deserved. And Stewart didn't go over top - he expressed the rightful anger

Here's the NYT's take.

MUST SEE: The Kramer interview reminded me of when Stewart went on Crossfire back around 2004 and blasted Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson for "hurting America." If you haven't seen it - you should (here) ... and you'll see what awkwardness looks like - and what the Kramer interview could have been.

Toons

Succession Isn't Treason, Right?

(via Syd O and Medium) Chuck Norris wants to run for President ... of TEXAS! From CNN:

“I may run for president of Texas,” Norris wrote Monday in a column posted at WorldNetDaily. “That need may be a reality sooner than we think. If not me, someone someday may again be running for president of the Lone Star state, if the state of the union continues to turn into the enemy of the state.”

The actor claimed “thousands of cell groups will be united around the country in solidarity over the concerns for our nation” and said that if states decide to secede from the union, that Texas would lead the way.

“Anyone who has been around Texas for any length of time knows exactly what we'd do if the going got rough in America,” Norris wrote.

CAFO's and Disease

(via Meals) Nick Kristof is on the ball exposing the risks of concentrated commercial hog farming may pose to humans.

[Dr. Anderson] began seeing strange rashes on his patients, starting more than a year ago. They began as innocuous bumps — “pimples from hell,” he called them — and quickly became lesions as big as saucers, fiery red and agonizing to touch.

They could be anywhere, but were most common on the face, armpits, knees and buttocks. Dr. Anderson took cultures and sent them off to a lab, which reported that they were MRSA, or staph infections that are resistant to antibiotics.

Go Local. Go Organic. Go mixed use.

Stewart v. Kramer

Don't piss off Jon Stewart! Take a look at this Daily Show video of Stewart skewering CNBC. And then this follow-up clip of him raking over Jim Cramer. And more here and here.

UPDATE: Now, guess what? Kramer will be on the Daily Show tonight!

Till High School Do Us Part

(via Halperin) People Magazine reports that 18 year-olds Bristol Palin and her fiance split up a few weeks ago ... they were going to get married after High School Graduation.

The Israel Lobby

Read Stephen Walt on Chas Freeman's withdrawal from consideration for the National Intelligence Committee (NIC - the group that helps with NIE's and advises the DNI, etc.).

For those who haven't followed this story (and the MSM sure hasn't), Freeman is known as a tough critic of Israel, and the NIC was a pretty high up intel post. His pick was seen as a good chance for a real dialog on our "special relationship" with Israel and many watched to see when the fireworks with AIPAC and the rest of the Israel lobby would start... and, well, now we've got the answer - game, set, match.

Also, Conor Clarke ran into him on the 42 bus in DC this morning. Freeman said he thought Fallows was fair to him.

UPDATE: Freeman tells NPR he "Did it for the country"

Toon

Douthat to the NYT

(via VH1) Ross Douthat - a 29 year old (really!) blogger at the Atlantic - has just been named as Bill Kristol's replacement over at the NYT op-ed page. I couldn't be happier. I read Ross consistently and think he's a very impressive conservative. David Brooks loves him too, I remember a while back that Brooks said that Ross's style of conservatism was the future of the GOP (and he also gave a favorable view Douthat's The Grand New Party). Trust me, he's a thoughtful, thinking, conservative who deserves the increased readership he's going to get over at the Grey Lady. He and Brooks are a great one-two punch for the page ... but of course they'll be painted as the 2 Republicans that liberals love most.

Also, back when Kristol left I posted Politico's speculation that Ross was among the frontrunners ... he was my inside favorite, but I guess I was too cowardly to own up to it. Either way - color me satisfied.

UPDATE: I concur with this.

The Great Disruption

(via Syd O) This Tom Friedman column from the weekend is a very important read. I think he's absolutely right - our economy has been built on circular funny money that's unsustainable - we need to move to tangible products and services that won't deplete our resources.

What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”

We have created a system for growth that depended on our building more and more stores to sell more and more stuff made in more and more factories in China, powered by more and more coal that would cause more and more climate change but earn China more and more dollars to buy more and more U.S. T-bills so America would have more and more money to build more and more stores and sell more and more stuff that would employ more and more Chinese ...

We can’t do this anymore.

Obama's Pelosi Problem

(via Syd O) Newsweek has a short piece on how Pelosi may be scuttling Obama's bipartisan efforts.

[Pennsylvania Republican] Charlie Dent wanted to vote for Barack Obama's stimulus package. Obama really wanted Dent to vote for it. Nancy Pelosi? Not so much.

Iceland is Broke as a Joke

Michael Lewis (the guy who wrote "The End of Wall Street") has a piece in Vanity Fair on the boom and bust of Iceland's financial system ... which is now flat broke. I've only gotten part way through it, but thought I'd post it before I head to the mountains.

Neighborhood Folk

The Obama's promised to be involved in the neighborhood when they moved to D.C. - so far, so good. Today Michelle volunteered at a soup kitchen.

Some Good Candids

Check out this story on Obama's personal photographer (ex Tribune guy).

Now David Frum is Not a True Conservative

David Frum - Bush's old speechwriter - is critical of Rush Limbaugh:

On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of “responsibility,” and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.

And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we’re cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word – we’ll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.

Rush knows what he is doing. The worse conservatives do, the more important Rush becomes as leader of the ardent remnant. The better conservatives succeed, the more we become a broad national governing coalition, the more Rush will be sidelined.

And for that - he's getting thrown under the GOP bus. I think Ross (a reformist republican) sums it up right (too bad his conservatism has been called into question too):

Just imagine, for a moment, how conservatives would react if four months after the worst defeat liberalism had suffered in a generation, an Olbermann (or a Moyers or a Michael Moore or a Bill Maher or whomever) showed up to deliver the keynote address at a liberal equivalent of CPAC, and during the course of his speech he blasted every Democrat who disagrees with him as a miserable sell-out, suggested that conservatives are fascists and conservatism a psychosis, lectured the crowd on the irrelevance of policy ideas to liberalism's political prospects, and insisted that the only blueprint liberals need to win elections is the one that Lyndon Johnson used to rout Barry Goldwater. And then further imagine that both before and after this speech, a series of left-of-center politicians ventured criticisms of Olbermann, only to beat a hasty and apologetic retreat as soon as he turned his fire on them. Conservatives would be chortling - and rightly so! Not because liberalism needs to purge or marginalize its Keith Olbermanns, or because impassioned liberal entertainers don't have a place in left-of-center discourse - but because when your political persuasion faces a leadership vacuum, you don't want to have it filled by someone who appeals to an impassioned but narrow range of voters, and whose central incentive is to maximize his own ratings.

Remember when National Review ran a cover story about Howard Dean, entitled "Please, Nominate This Man!"? That's how liberals feel about Rush Limbaugh at the moment: They can't get enough of him. I don't see any reason why conservatives should be playing into their hands.

Obama Let Me Down

Read Dowd's column today - she's right that Obama hasn't come through on his promise to go through the budget "line by line" and eliminate pork. McCain has gone back to his strength - and Washington is back to its' old ways.

UPDATE: Jon Chiat responds. I'm somewhere in the middle between Dowd and Chiat

Are We All Keynesians Now?

Brad DeLong thinks the answer is: "no ... but we should be." Read his post on "Say's Law". One thing I wasn't clear on was that he concedes that Americans will be buying T-bills and Gov't debt (which is what supply-siders argue will offset actual investment)- but I'm not sure that's true ... won't China buy most of it and therefore free up localized investment? I don't know - I'm not much of an economist.

My executive summary:

Some opponents of the stimulus rely on "Say's Law" which is the claim that decisions to increase spending - whether from the gov't or anyone else - can't spur the economy and raise employment and production b/c demand is created by supply. If the gov't spends, then someone else must cut back. DeLong reminds us that the '03-'06 credit bubble (spending) and the '96-'00 housing bubble (spending) did boost employment - and in general spending spurs the economy, and the gov'ts money is as good as anyone else's.

Will A Real Conservative Please Stand Up?

One of the most interesting debates going on currently is on the state of the GOP and the direction the party should take (back to basics? modernize? follow Rush? follow Newt? etc.), and I can't tell you how many times I've been told "Well, _____'s not a real conservative" - to which this Matt Yglesias post offers a good point made by the Brits.

Equally, if a return to “true” conservatism is all that is needed for victory, why is it that, by the conservative movement’s own strict standards, there has been only one truly conservative president since the Second World War? Reagan is the only Republican president who hasn’t been written out the movement. This suggests that, far from being a guarantee of electoral success, Reaganism might better be viewed as an outlier, not a reliable template for future victories. The United States may well be, by international standards, a centre-right nation, but common sense dictates that the “centre” bit matters just as much as the “right”.

The Conservative MSM

I think I've relayed this point before ... but Ta-Nehisi Coates has another example from Sunday's MTP of a pretend "2 liberal v. 2 conservative" policy debate. There's a good case to be made that on many TV shows the conservatives on the roundtable are bonafide, while the liberals are lukewarm progressives:

This is an interesting debate. What you have below are four people--two, presumably from each side. I think Harold Ford gamely defended Obama's budget. Dee-Dee Meyers, not so much. I'm not even sure that that's why she was there. Also there's David Gregory. His job is to be critical of Obama and I have no problem with that. But because of the other parts of the panel, you end up with a three against one dynamic, with Dee-Dee Meyers kinda giving color commentary. Moreover, even our one is barely a one--whereas Scarborough and Murphy would call themselves conservatives in a minute, Ford has never thought of himself as a liberal.

My beef is simple--We need actual liberals to represent the liberal perspective. I think part of the problem may be that our most effective defenders are no long in the MSM, but here online. You can pull yours truly out of that convo. On budgetary policy, I would have gotten stomped by Murphy and Scarborough, and I've got the sense to know it. But give me Ezra, or Matt. Give me someone from the Obsidian Wings crew. We have people who know this stuff. God bless Krugman, but we have a deeper bench than that.

Meditation in a Toolshed

I found this essay by C.S. Lewis - and the analogy especially - insightful. It's called Meditation in a Toolshed.

I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The
sun was shining outside and through the crack at
the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From
where I stood that beam of light, with the specks
of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in
the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black.
I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.
Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my
eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture
vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no
beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny
at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the
branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd
million miles away, the sun. Looking along the
beam, and looking at the beam are very different
experiences.

An Economic Love Song

(via Greg Mankiw) Check out this spoof love song that must have been written in Econ 101 - it's called "Girl Your Marginal Benefits"

For Your Queue

I finally saw Taxi to the Dark Side - last year's Oscar winner for best documentary - and I'd emphatically recommend it. The movie starts with the death of an Afghani taxi driver in the U.S. prison in Bagram - later revealed to be a homicide - and follows the trail of abuse through the brass, administration, DTA, waterboarding, Geneva Common Article IV, Gitmo, and everything else that's gone on with respect to detainee interrogations since 9/11. Add it to your Netflix queue.