Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2797

The "Easy" Social Security Fix, Ctd

Free Exchange objects to soaking the rich. "Soaking the rich" means not allowing us a total exemption from social security payments after a certain amount of income. I don't like it either - and Drum makes a good case for incrementalism, both politically and fiscally. But the more we discuss these options, the better. And on that matter, a word of praise for John Boehner who has finally managed to propose something that might actually help the country's perilous finances:

Boehner also called...

How Is This Not Apartheid?

Nick Kristof observes ethnic cleansing and collective punishment first-hand:

On one side of a barbed-wire fence here in the southern Hebron hills is the Bedouin village of Umm al-Kheir, where Palestinians live in ramshackle tents and huts. They aren't allowed to connect to the electrical grid, and Israel won't permit them to build homes, barns for their animals or even toilets. When the villagers build permanent structures, the Israeli authorities come and demolish them, according to...

Another Odd Lie?

From a speech delivered at the International Bowl Expo in Las Vegas yesterday:

Palin recalled her youth when her father set pins in Idaho. "My Dad was on a Thursday night bowling league," she said. "He bonded
with his buddies. I have memories of that point of my life which mean
very, very much to me."

A press release confirms that account:

Professinga personal appreciation for the bowling industry, Palin also noted that, duringhis high school years, her father Chuck Heath Sr. worked as a...

Why Is Bibi Angry?

CSIS looks at the Arab-Israeli military balance:

As the report shows, Israel has ... benefited from continuing US aidand arms transfers – benefits that are substantially greater than thedollar figures show because Israel is able to draw on the most advancedUS military technology, often on preferential terms, and integrate intoits own advanced military industrial base. Israeli political claimsthat the Obama Administration has somehow distanced itself from aconcern with Israel's security have...

The End Of Gay History?

Dan Zak fears young gays are forgetting their forebears:

For a demographic that was once so twined with mortality, the gayshave gotten good (or have they always been good?) at focusing on thenow, the young, the ephemeral. Today's gays — the gays of mygeneration, the millennials, the 20-somethings — are post-gay, or New Gay,loosed from the closet, free of the diving bell of AIDS-as-executioner,left to skirmish over (or ignore) petty legislative battles on astate-by-state or school-by-school...

Glenn Beck's Reading List, Ctd

Douthat passes judgement:

[Conservative:] rethinking needs tocircle back to the realities of contemporary politics, and thechallenges of actual-existing policy issues, rather than indulging inmanichaean fantasies about a final battle between virtuousliberty-lovers and wicked statists.What's more, [Continetti is:] right to suggestthat certain ways of rethinking American politics are simply toxic andself-discrediting and ought to be labeled as such, no matter how manycopies of "The Road to...

Less Powerful Than We Think

Exum tends "to believe the actions of local actors are more significant than those of U.S. policymakers":

In general, we Americans -- especially some of our friends on theAmerican Right -- tend to overestimate the importance of what we do incomparison to what local actors do. (Iraq and Afghanistan, seriously,should have taught us better.) That doesn't mean we fold up our tentsand head home: we just have to be realistic about what we can hope toachieve through the application of U.S. power...

Christianist Watch

Sharron Angle finally granted a 30-minute interview to the Nevada media. Here's a bit on the separation of church and state:

Pareene parses her answer:

As for the context, she actually got it mostly right:

"Thomas Jefferson was actually addressing a church and telling them through his address that there had been a wall of separation put up to protect the church from being taken over by a state religion, and that's what they meant. They didn't think they couldn't bring their values to the...

Aftershocks

Tyler Cowen warns that "the Haitian social fabric is fraying":

Most people are ignoring the Haitian situation, as they have mistakenly
concluded it has stabilized.  It has not.  You still have a million and
a half people, in a basically untenable situation, more or less
homeless, with the heart of the country destroyed and not much ongoing
reconstruction or reform.

Haiti - Caribbean - Arts and Entertainment - Haitian - Ethnicity

Catalog Living

A new Tumblr that narrates scenes found in high-end home catalogs:

Elaine was not amused by Gary's passive-aggressive response to her request to "garnish the cocktails."

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