Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2697
July 30, 2010
Those Fecund Brits
European Union - War on Terrorism - Warfare and Conflict - Ahmed Rashid - September 11 2001
How The Older Half Lives
Jon Michaud is concerned:
People are putting aside less in savings for old age now than theyhave in any decade since the Great Depression. More than half of thevery old now live without a spouse, and we have fewer children thanever before—yet we give virtually no thought to how we will live outour later years alone. Equally worrying, and far less recognized, medicine has been slow toconfront the very changes that it has been responsible for—or to applythe knowledge we already have about how...
The Other Oil Spills
Fundamentals
Bernstein revisits the 2000 election. He thinks that the state of the economy played a large role:
For better or worse, what political scientists have found is thatvoters have very, very short memories; the models that work best onlylook at election-year economic factors. So Gore apparently got littlecredit for the boom years. Moreover, what seems to matter isn'tunemployment, or general economic growth, but changes in realdisposable income. And as it happened, GDP growth continued...
The Bush Tax Cuts Fight
Howard Gleckman sizes up the party politics:
Stalemate means the Bush tax cuts expire for everyone. For
households, that will feel like a tax increase—an outcome favored by a
handful of budget wonks but very few real people. Democrats
this will give them the leverage they need to force the GOP to
Republicans, by contrast, feel they'd be able to blame the
Democrats for failing to tackle the pending tax hike.My best guess is that, in the end, Congress will extend the...
July 29, 2010
The Daily Wrap
Today on the Dish, Congress encouraged war against Iran, the GOP continued to flail on fiscal issues, Cameron took on Pakistan, a reader explained the real reason behind his support for Turkey, and the Israeli army knocked down a Bedouin village. The oil spill didn't appear as bad as once thought.
Andrew sized up the midterm elections and tore into a WSJ op-ed on the fiscal crisis. Ambinder looked to November, Friedersdorf fingered the practical perils of partisanship, Josh Green backed
"You're All Ugly"
Ezra Klein - Republican - People - United States Senate - Democratic Party
The Rebirth Of The Electric Car? Ctd
Daniel Gross isn't fazed by the Volt's price tag because he thinks it will come down. A parallel:
When the automobile age dawned at the turn of the 20thcentury, cars were toys, luxury products and status symbols for therich to race and tool around in. They weren't affordable for theoverwhelming majority of Americans. In 1903, most car companies were"turning out products with steep prices of $3,000 or even $4,000,"writes Douglas Brinkley in Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and...
Negev: More Context
This helps:
The dispute today is over land ownership. Bedouin families around
Arakib say they own about 4,600 acres of the desert, insisting that
paid taxes during the Ottoman period and British Empire. Gravestones
the cemetery show some families have inhabited the area for at least
140 years.In 1951, Bedouin leaders say, they were forced by Israel's military into settlements along the West Bank border. "They told us we could come back in six months," said Nori Uqbi, a community...
Rules Based On Fear
Mandatory sentences for crack have been 100 times those for cocaine since the 80s. Congress has just reduced the ratio to 18 to 1. Steven Taylor draws lessons:
I would not recommend crack cocaine usage and there were (and are)still social costs of some significance associated with its usage. Theproblem with the reaction in the 1980s was that, like much of our druglaws, we overreact and make rules based on fear and the drama of themoment rather than rational consideration of the problem. We...
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