Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2642

Chart Of The Day, Ctd

Jamelle Bouie counters this chart - and Yglesias' contention that "among college graduates, there simply isn't an economic crisis" - with the chart above. Bouie :

A college degree certainly helps black workers, but not by much, atleast compared to the national average. What's more, well-off blackstend to have more social proximity to blacks lower on the income scale,so while white college grads are mostly isolated from the recession'seffects, I'm not sure if you can say the same for...

Mental Health Break

Dumb & Dumber as thriller:

A more straightforward mashup with Inception here.

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About Israel's Next Attack, And The Atlantic

Fallows responds to the notion that the Atlantic as a whole is now a de facto party to the neoconservative and Israeli campaign to initiate a global war with Iran here and here. I hope to post a long and impassioned response to Jeffrey's cover-essay making the Israeli case for war next week. But a small word about the meta-issue. The point of this magazine, as I understand it, is airing real and honest debate about the great issues of our time. I think Jeffrey's piece is a classic example of ...

"The Explosions Will Not Happen For 10 or 15 or 20 Years"

A truly unhinged Congressman Gohmert touts his "terror babies" canard to Anderson. There are few better examples of the politics of fear than the ranting of Gohmert. His "argument" is that because the 14th Amendment could possibly prompt Jihadists to give birth to "terror babies" who would grow up as Americans and then commit terror, we should accept it as established fact and reverse a core part of the Constitution to prevent it. You tear up the Constitution to protect us from a threat that ...

On Krauthammer And The Mosque

I have nothing to add to Steve Benen. Money quote:

Also note the lesson Krauthammer believes Pope John Paul II was
offering: "This is not your place; it belongs to others." In this case,
who are we to believe "others" are? On Sept. 11, 2001, the victims
included innocents of every race, ethnicity, and religion. Krauthammer
seems to suggest Muslim Americans are the "others" who should stay away.
That is as absurd as it is offensive.

It is worse than offensive. It is a conflation of...

"Depressing Because It Is So Persuasive" Ctd

A reader writes:

Your reader's comments unintentionally capture McWhorter's point exactly. They blame cities, teachers, and anybody else except the culprit. A sample of their silly tropes: Urban schools are "underfunded?" Bull. They actually spend more per pupil than most (check out D.C.'s history on that).  Kids in cities can't graduate because the teaching staff is awful? Garbage. Urban districts certainly have a larger percentage of time servers and patronage hires, but the fact remains...

Leaving Afghanistan In 2011? Ctd

Petraeus is pushing for a slower withdrawal. Joe Klein saw this coming:

It is the nature of David Petraeus to move mountains to achieve
mission--and the immediate mountain sitting in front of him is
Obama Administration's December policy review, which will determine
quickly we start to leave Afghanistan in July 2011.

Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal came away from the lastpolicy review, in the fall of 2009, with the distinct impression thatthe 2011 date would not signal the...

Support For Marriage Equality Accelerating? Ctd

A reader writes:

Living in Arkansas, my husband and I have a perspective on the "marriage equality should be driven solely by state legislatures" argument that is surely shared by many gay couples in the Bible Belt and elsewhere.  Our state is a good 20 years away from majority approval of same sex marriage, and we know that as long as we live in Arkansas, we do so as two single, cohabiting men in the eyes of the state.  Therefore, we are faced with an impossible choice: (a) live alone, with...

Past And Present, Ctd

A reader writes:

I'm not an expert, but to my untrained eye, those "color photos" look more like photochroms. Photochroms are a combination of photography and lithography, but aren't real color photos. Essentially, they are artificially colored black and white photos. For some awesome early color photography, check out the collection of photos by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii at Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia's sister site for media. Each of these images was itself originally three...

The Other Sex Abuse Conspiracy

Eli Lehrer urges Congress and the Obama administration to move faster on efforts to stop prison rape. But they face many hurdles:

Particularly in the most chaotic prisons, turning a blind eye towards sexual abuse helps keep tensions between racial-supremacist gangs under control. In juvenile facilities, furthermore, a growing body of evidence of guards abusing their charges has some guards and administrators rightly nervous that tougher standards will reveal deeper problems. Finally...