Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2789

The Weekly Wrap

Today on the Dish, Michael Steele let slip his biggest blunder yet, Kristol flipped out, Greenwald slammed the DNC for its Rovian response, and Larison and Frum sounded off. Econ bloggers chewed over the latest job numbers, Barlett somewhat sided with Krugman, Yglesias pushed for lifting the Social Security cap, Pew provided data on how the recession is affecting us, and Alex Hart looked at whether collecting unemployment makes people lazy.

Marcy Wheeler countered the NYT's defense of its...

Digital Memorials

Mark Larson reflects on learning of a friend's death over Facebook:

Coming from a generation that grew up with Facebook and lived in aworld in which relationships weren't official until they were on thesocial networking site, in a strange way finding out about a frienddying in war via Facebook made it more real. You could still go to hisprofile and see the pictures he'd posted of the nights he spent outbefore deploying or the hundreds of posts on his wall from grievingfriends trying to send a...

Chart Of The Day II

Leonhart finds a study comparing the current downturn to the 1982 recession:

Strikingly, for nearly every age group the unemployment rate is higher
today than it was during the worst of the early 1980s recession.

DiA by the Obama administration's attempt to put a positive spin on today's underwhelming job report:

The average voter is most likely to have job opportunities as a readyheuristic about the state of the economy, not the manufacturingproduction index. For the White...

The Wrong Kind Of Worker?

Drum ponders retraining:

In addition to a simple aggregate lack of jobs due to the recession,what we're suffering from right now is still more of a sectoral shiftissue more than a basic skills issue. If you look at lists of thefastest growing occupations, they've always been populated mainly byjobs that require a high school degree and some specializedtraining. Lots of them are in healthcare (physical therapists, dentalassistants, etc.) and lots of them require specific computer skills.Laid...

The Green Shoots Of A Positive Conservatism

Erik Kain looks for signs of hope:

One reason I enjoy the writing of center-right thinkers such as Reihan Salam or Ross Douthat (among others) is that rather than constantly taking a position against liberals or other conservatives, they are constantly on the prowl for good ideas.

I think this is especially true of Reihan, whose wonkish blog over at NRO can only be described as a sort of positive conservatism. Instead of focusing on simply being in opposition to the liberal agenda – which is...

Face Of The Day

Pfc. Reed Kaiser of Detroit, Michigan with the US Army's 82nd AirborneDivision looks into the hills where militants were attacking his unitJuly 2, 2010 over the village of Joikahr, Afghanistan. Paratroopers inthe 82nd Airborne moved on Joikahr in the early morning of July 2 toestablish a security outpost overlooking the town. When they arrived,they found the town deserted of civilians and came under fire fromsuspected Taliban militants ensconced in the surrounding hills. Afterseveral...

Michael Vizzini Steele, Ctd

Steele has already attempted to walk back the remarks. Larison sees Steele's criticism of Afghanistan as a failed attempt to play politics:

Steele evidently believes that Afghanistan is now a politicalliability for Obama, and he wants to take advantage of this, but farfrom being a potential "turning point"it is just another example of how clueless and hopeless Steele is whenit comes to serving in a leadership capacity for Republicans. I canhardly wait to hear how Steele's cynical posturing...

Storm Is Coming

Charlie Cook continues to think it will be a very bad election for Democrats:

The potential is here for a result that is proportional to some of thebigger postwar midterm wave elections. These kinds of waves are oftenragged; almost always some candidates who looked dead somehow surviveand others who were deemed safe get sucked down in the undertow. That'sthe nature of these beasts. But the recent numbers confirm that trendsfirst spotted late last summer have fully developed into at least...

Why Does Trig Matter? Ctd

The first weekend of the contretemps, I emailed a top DC journalist to ask him what he thought about the story. His fundamental response - and one echoed in many Washington circles - was that it might well be true but he wondered "how this gets into the MSM."

Well, it is beginning to seep into the MSM, as with this story from The Week. The comments section seems evenly divided and are worth reading. Palingates has more on the slowly creaking dam of cognitive dissonance:

Our friend Phil Munger...

Why Does Trig Matter, Ctd?

The first weekend of the contretemps, I emailed a top DC journalist to ask him what he thought about the story. His fundamental response - and one echoed in many Washington circles - was that it might well be true but he wondered "how this gets into the MSM."

Well, it is beginning to seep into the MSM, as with this story from The Week. The comments section seems evenly divided and are worth reading. Palingates has more on the slowly creaking dam of cognitive dissonance:

Our friend Phil Munger...